Lion-Hearted Girl
by shooting-stetsons
Summary: Of course they both know, Clint's not an idiot and it's Natasha's body, but it hadn't been something they thought they needed to worry about. They hadn't been trying, hadn't planned on this, but still feel as though some great disaster has happened.
1. Chapter 1

**TRIGGER WARNING FOR MISCARRIAGE **

**This was originally written as a Girl!Sherlock/John fic on the Sherlock kinkmeme, I was the filler, and rewrote it for this pairing. If you notice similarities, that's why.**

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It's a hectic month for all of them. There is a manic cyborg on the loose somehow related to a sex slavery ring in Iran, which should buoy Natasha's spirits, but as the body count rises and they come no closer to making a connection it stops being fun or interesting and starts feeling more like work. Several times she almost gives up and goes back to New York out of pure hate for this stupid machine, but then Clint makes an apt appearance with a cup of strong tea or starts rubbing her shoulders in that way he knows she likes and she feels a little better.

They still don't have sex, only because it's her rule while on a mission. She hopes that the one night they squeezed in a week before the job began - 'squeezed in', like a dentist appointment or something - will be enough to satisfy Clint for the long haul. He's good to her that way. He understands.

She's not been having an easy time of it lately, she realizes near the crux of the matter as they're diving across rooftops. It's a horrible time to think about these sorts of things, but when she's just that much slower and nearly misses her jump she can't help looking back and pinpointing exactly when she started flagging. Two weeks into the mission she'd been so exhausted that Clint actually managed to get her to sleep through the night, rather than their routine of three-hour shifts. He hadn't even had to do much to convince her. It's not her period, though she has been having cramps; her period's always been erratic if present at all, and she's learned to figure out when it's really on its way and just a bit of indigestion.

But it's not indigestion, either.

It's probably just the frustration of build-up with no relief, she decides, and in a split-second she's tossed the concern aside and picked herself up from the roof. They catch the woman (a female cyborg who evaded SHIELD for over a month; Natasha's starting to find the joy in her work again) with minimal damage to their persons - Natasha got power-housed in the kidneys and Clint a gash in his arm, but they're alright - and once they're debriefed and the cyborg's carted off for questioning, Natasha and Clint take the first taxi back to their hotel. She isn't feeling well.

"You're looking rough, Tash," Clint notes as they stumble in the door. "Feeling okay?"

Without any regard for tidiness Natasha starts undressing. "Fine, just tired. I think I want to sleep alone tonight."

He nods; it's not the first time she's asked this after a mission since they'd fallen together. "That's fine. I'll try not to wake you when I go for my run."

"You're still training tomorrow after the night we've had?"

Clint shrugs, pulling off his armor and quietly despairing over the bandages on his arm. "Might as well. I've been sleeping more than you, after all."

Her answer is a shake of the head and to climb under the bed covers, leaving Clint to the roll-away bed. She really is exhausted, and is asleep almost the moment she flops face-first into the pillow. She doesn't dream, never has within memory, but sleeps deeply until she abruptly wakes sometimes around three in the morning.

At first Natasha doesn't know why she's woken up, feels irritated by the interruption, and is about to roll onto her side and drop off again when she feels it: a rolling, crushing pain across her abdomen strong enough to make her gasp and clench the sheets. The usual hotel linen feels wet in a way that is so, so wrong, and after a moment of fumbling in the dark Natasha finds the lamp, nearly knocks it over in an attempt to turn it on. Clint stirs but doesn't wake, his back to her light.

The sheets look like a crime scene, and despite years of conditioning against gore Natasha's shock is so strong that she is momentarily paralyzed. Then she feels another surge and curls around herself, too panicked by the onslaught of sensation on little sleep to bully herself to her feet. She feels a terrible something - something bloody and wrong - and she gags it hurts so badly. Her legs are smeared and sticky with the rusty brown blood. She's shaking, she doesn't know what has just happened but she's tired and sick and needlessly, tremendously afraid.

Without knowing why at first Natasha yanks the sheets from the bed - _hide the evidence, evidence of what? The evidence under your armor. No, that's wrong, that's_ - and drags them to the bathroom adjoining their room, even as more blood starts slipping down her legs and a trembling sob slips from her throat. She doesn't know why she's so upset over something as minor as having her period, because of course that's all it is, couldn't be anything else-

She dumps the soiled sheets into the bathtub and turns the water on cold, cold, cold, the way her mother would have taught her to do in case her period ever came unexpected in the middle of the night like this. _Cold will get it out, make it go away, make it all stop, make it less-_

Her legs are shaking and eventually she has to sit on the edge of the tub and just breathe, reminding herself that for the last several minutes she has not been doing enough of it. The bathroom tile and porcelain beneath her are stained with a trail of reddish-brown, the tub is filling with murky water because the sheets are clogging the drain, her stomach still hurts though she can't tell if it's hunger pangs or another dreadful surge, and there are tears on her face she doesn't yet know the cause of.

"Natasha?"

Clint must have woken up when she turned on the tap; she didn't notice how it roared. He's bleary-eyed and tousled from interrupted sleep, but his face is lined only with concern as he sees her perched like something from a vile horror film at the edge of the tub. "You okay?" he asks. His mouth is dry; he was snoring.

Nodding and keeping her eyes averted she replies, "I just have my period. Got it on - the sheets - I - _sorry_ -" she feels a surge greater than the others, accompanied by a small rush of blood, and breaks off with a muffled groan. Suddenly Clint is slipping in the mess on the floor in his haste to get to her side, wrap his arms around her, ease the pain, brush away tears that neither of them understand for the early hour. Then she realizes that she's getting hysterical for little or no reason at all. It was just such a shock, she rationalizes; after all, being prepared for blood and guts on a mission is much different than waking up to blood and guts in the middle of the night.

After she's calmed down and the pain has faded a little Clint gives her knee a squeeze. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up. I'll take your sheets downstairs first. You wait right here, okay?" All she can do is nod and watch Clint clean up her mess - he's always doing that - with cold hands. Why are her hands cold? But she's been squeezing her own arms for the past twenty minutes, so that must be it.

Clint returns and she's still sitting there like a statue. Something comes over his face as he helps her climb into the tub and undress, this time with warm water running from the tap. They both see the blood clots in her underwear and on her thighs, one standing out particularly vivid and terrible from the rest, but don't talk about it. They don't talk at all until after Natasha is clean and completely despondent in Clint's capable hands. He wraps her in a plush hotel towel, then vanishes to the corner store for sanitary napkins and painkillers while she sits in the bedroom without anything on but the towel round her middle.

It's gone four in the morning when he comes back with what she needs. She dresses without a word, still shaking, and he makes the spicy tea she likes best with hot water from the tap. They sit in the dark bedroom and try to wrap their heads around what has just happened. Of course they both know, Clint's not an idiot and it's Natasha's body, but it hadn't been something they thought they needed to worry about. They hadn't been trying, hadn't planned on this, but still feel as though some great disaster has happened.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Clint finally asks. His voice is strained and weak, but carrying the determination of a soldier who needs to hear that his entire platoon has been killed before seeing the carnage himself.

She shakes her head. "I didn't know. I swear to _God_, Clint, I had no idea. If I had, I -" She swallows and shakes her head again, hugging her mug close. He's not going to ask what she would have done, had she known, and she doesn't know the answer. Clint doesn't push her, and they sit quietly for a while.

"Maybe..." Clint begins after a long time, but has to stop and steel himself. He speaks slowly, obviously weighing every word before he says it. "Maybe this is, sort of, for the best, right now? I mean, this...it's...neither of us exactly has the most stable of careers, y'know Nat? So maybe...Christ." He shakes his head as though disgusted by his own vocal shortcomings, and changes direction of the conversation. "How're you feeling?"

She takes a moment to assess. "A bit nauseous, achey, still having cramps and-"

"No, Nat, how are you _feeling?_ You know...emotionally," he corrects himself. "You seemed pretty worked up when I found you."

Oh. Oh, well that is different, and really not territory either of them is familiar with. They're agents, they don't do feelings. She shrugs her shoulders and opens her mouth to say 'I was in shock,' but instead what comes out is, "It feels like I'm five."

Clint blinks. "Sorry, it's still early and you're shrewd, I know, but it feels like we're having two different conversations." He smiles weakly, tries to touch her hand on top of the covers, but she pulls away, shaking again.

"I feel like one of the memories they gave me," she says, voice hollow and quick, "when I was five, at my grandmother's house. I wanted to look at the vase on her mantelpiece. I didn't know my grandfather's ashes were inside until I-I accidentally knocked it over and it broke all over the fl-"

She's crying again, the fictional five-year-old feelings of watching her fictional grandmother's quiet despair and loud anger - the Red Room really knew what they were doing when they put those little details in her head - intermingling with the bloody confusion and horror of this night until she doesn't know whether to cower or scream. Clint trips over himself getting closer, pulling her up and then back down but this time into his lap, wrapping sturdy secure arms around her and pressing kisses to the crown of her head as he whispers meaningless platitudes. "It's okay, it's fine, it wasn't your fault, Tasha..."

It feels like her fault. Despite Clint's attempts to comfort her, she feels filthy and naked in the dark bedroom. But she pulls herself together with an almighty sniff, pressing heels of her hands to her eyes until Clint pulls them away. "I'm acting like an idiot," she insists through a clogged nose. "It's not rational to be upset over this; I didn't even know. We weren't trying, we haven't discussed this for perfectly good reasons, I wasn't-" She gulps thickly, looks down at her hands, finds dried blood in the creases of her knuckles and under her fingernails. She is as red as her ledger now, but there is no way to wipe this out.

Clint pulls her closer, his nose and mouth nestled in the curve of her shoulder. "It's a hormone rush," he says slowly, Coulson's words in his mouth, and she relaxes slightly. Medical explanations always make her feel better, and he knows it. "Completely normal reaction, considering how fucking insane things have been in the past few weeks." His mouth puckers and hardens into a kiss on her shoulder. "We've both been strung out over the past few weeks, you haven't been eating or sleeping right, your body's running on fumes and it's put you on edge." After a moment she accepts this explanation and leans her head against his, waiting for The Plan. They always help each other come up with one in emergencies, so this will be no different.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," he sighs after a minute of thought. She smiles into his hair. "You and I are gonna go the fuck to sleep. Tomorrow, back on the Helicarrier, either you or we are gonna go to the infirmary to make sure everything went okay and you aren't gonna get an infection or something, and once you're feeling better, if you want to, we'll talk. We're both kinda tired and shaken up. I don't really think you wanna have an in-depth conversation right now. Right?"

Pulling back slightly, she looks into his face and sees that he does seem very shaken along with tired. He worries about her so much, always works to protect her, works as a barrier between her and the rest of the world, and not for the first time she wonders _Who protects you, Clint? Who looks after you like you look after me? It should be me. It should be me._ Right now, though, he just looks very, very sad. She nods and frames his pale sad tired perfect face between her hands. "Okay."

"Okay," he nods back with a weak smile. They get up, but before she can get away he pulls her back by the hand. They're inches apart, he rubs his nose along the length of hers and drops a kiss on her lips. "Hey, Tash?"

"Hm?"

"I love you so much."

She swallows and tries not to lose herself again, because the amount of patience and understanding Clint has for her digs a hole right into her chest that screams in the agony of love, and when she can't say the words he shows her that he knows anyway. "I want this," she says instead, fiercely, trying to get it out before she loses heart. "I want to do this with you. It won't be too much, I can handle it, and SHIELD can go die in a hole if they think otherwise. I _want_ it."

"It's okay, Nat, we can talk later," he assures her, pushing her hair back behind her ears, running deft fingers across her cheeks, her neck, her collar, her arms, and she feels so _safe_. Before she knows what she's doing her arms are around him tight. They stand like that for a few minutes before she finally finds the strength to pull away, give him space to breathe. He leads the way to his bed, one hand a steady anchor on the small of her back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Okay. I had no intention of continuing this beyond the first chapter, but then I was attacked by an onslaught of Clintasha feels and the plot bunnies wouldn't leave me alone. So. Here's to hoping I'll finish this one, since I only have the full plot half-formed so far. Also please keep in mind that I know VERY LITTLE of the comic canon. Some characters and situations that I'm introducing are going to be more my own invention and based on the comics, rather than actually spending endless hours researching comic canon while I should be doing homework or NaNoWriMo. thanks in advance for your patience, and enjoy!**

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Natasha's sleep for the next two hours was fitful at best, punctuated by bad dreams she thought she was finished with years ago, before SHIELD, before Clint, even before the Winter Soldier. Her rest smelled like smoke and gunpowder and barely stifled screams, cold antiseptic, after, back in the Red Room, the copper of her blood as they sliced her open, the chemical tang of dry ice in cryo where Winter would sleep in a few short years. The Red Room took the term "cool-down period" very seriously.

She woke with her face shoved into the hollow of Clint's neck and chest. They were both sweaty and he held her tight. It had to be uncomfortable, but he didn't mention it and didn't move until she was ready. And she made herself so, quickly, because she'd been bleeding so much more than a normal period and already there were stains on the sheets. Clint took care of it while she was in the bathroom. They didn't talk on the way to the rendezvous point, just walked and occasionally brushed hands in the dark of morning.

Of course Coulson knew something was up the moment they got into the SUV. Nothing could ever get past him. "Who broke what, and how much do I owe the hotel?" he asked in lieu of greeting.

"A mattress, set of sheets, deep-cleansing the carpet, and possibly therapy for the cleaning staff," Natasha listed before Clint could try lying for them. It never worked and Coulson would have to know at some point anyway.

When several long moments yawned out and neither of them offered any further details, their keeper shook his head. "Okay, whatever, don't tell me. But you know that if something's up Fury's going to be breathing down your necks." She laid across the back seat and pillowed her head on Clint's thigh. Within seconds his hand was in her hair and Coulson was back to pretending they didn't exist with the air of an exasperated father looking after his unruly children.

"Do you want to talk to him together?" Clint whispered.

Natasha shook her head. "You do it."

She left them on the Helicarrier to wait outside the Infirmary. There was only one agent in all of SHIELD who knew her altered physiology to the point of being able to recite it in her sleep, and she wasn't on board. Natasha was more than willing to wait until Agent Carter could be reached at home, though, rather than going through the whole tedious process again. There wasn't any urgency, other than the frankly alarming amount of blood saturating her sanitary napkin. Clint brought her juice after an hour or so, to keep her from getting woozy. "You should eat something."

"I'm fine, Clint, I don't need to be b-"

The words died in her throat.

"Suit yourself," Clint said, his expression clouding over. His fingertips barely brushed her shoulder as he passed to go.

Coulson stepped by about half an hour later, looking troubled and thoughtful. When he saw her he offered up a small smile; she glowered. The last thing she needed was for her handler to start treating her like some delicate little princess just because of some stupid incident in the middle of the night. He ignored her sour and pleading looks, sitting in the chair beside hers. They both stared straight ahead. "I'm fine," she ground out through gritted teeth.

"Are you?" he instantly replied. His voice betrayed nothing but mild curiosity. "Because from what Barton said-"

"Barton's overreacting."

"In all the years we've known you, even after Geneva, Barton says he's never seen you cry. Not like that."

Taking a deep breath, Natasha thought over the years and realized that Clint was right. She hadn't lost control to hysteria like that in over fifty years. Looking down at her hands, so neatly folded in her lap like small white spiders, she didn't speak again even when Coulson got up to leave her.

Agent Carter finally got there an hour later, looking harried with her blonde hair askew. "This better be good, Agent Romanov, I was at my kid's birthday party. An apartment full of four-year-olds hopped up on sugar, joy of joys, right? You're just lucky my mom and grandma were around or I'd have had to bring the party with me, hah! Can you imagine Fury's face? Okay, okay, come in, I don't have all day, tell me what you've done to maim yourself this time," she said breathlessly.

Once she was changed into a scratchy paper gown, with her usual detached aplomb, Natasha explained. Carter, for her part, didn't offer any soft words or prying questions; she just set up the privacy curtain and walked briskly across the infirmary to get the necessary equipment. Natasha laid back, put her feet in the stirrups when instructed, and stared intently at the ceiling while Carter worked. She'd been poked, prodded, probed, and peeled open enough times not to outwardly react to yet another invasive procedure.

"Well, at least it was a complete miscarriage," Carter announced after the transvaginal exam and ultrasound. "There aren't any large pieces of tissue visible and your cervix is completely closed. You could be bleeding and uncomfortable for up to twenty days, though, so I want you off field work and taking it easy for six weeks, okay?"

Natasha sat up. "Unacceptable. You know I heal faster than that. Three weeks," she scowled.

Carter crossed her arms. "I would tell someone who healed slower _eight_. Six."

"Two."

"Five."

"Three."

"I won't settle for less than four, Agent Romanov."

"Why would I need to take it easy if I'm not even bleeding?"

"Because your body's still going to be healing itself, idiot," Carter snapped. "_Four weeks_."

"Three and a half."

They stared one another down for a long, tense moment, before finally shaking hands. "Pleasure doing business with you, Agent."

"Sharon."

While Carter got her ride back ashore - the Helicarrier wasn't actually in the air today - Natasha went to her on-board quarters to gather anything she might need that wasn't already in her apartment. There wasn't much, but she didn't want to ride back with Carter. It would open up the possibility for all sorts of awkward and uncomfortable questions that Natasha was not in the mood to answer. As it were, she left a note for Coulson telling him that she wouldn't be able to go to Vancouver, and that Clint would just have to make due or find another agent to go with him. He would be back in a week and would have hopefully forgotten about their agreement to talk.

Her apartment building was quiet and freezing cold when she arrived. The heating was broken again and the landlord was an 84-year-old Italian who didn't know the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. He thought she was Italian too, since they never spoke English to one another and her name was still Natalia when she moved in years ago. Without bothering to go up to her apartment first she talked her way in and fixed the heating herself. Giuseppe promised her some of his daughter's "famous" cannoli when she visited next. Sometimes he forgot that his poor daughter died several years ago.

Once that was cleared up she waded through the junk mail stacked inside her apartment door, changed her pad and into pajamas, and slept until early afternoon.

She woke up screaming with the sensation of choking on velvety flower petals deep in her throat, her back arching up off the bed as she fought for breath. There was something wrong, something missing, something encroaching between her legs and she scrabbled in the empty sheets to try to find the ghost of whatever it was she had lost so long ago. There was no one knocking on her door to make sure she was alright; the neighbors didn't dare approach the fiercely asocial Italian woman who never seemed to be home and always brought trouble when she was.

Natasha didn't mind. She liked the solitude, and when her episode was over she took a long shower to calm down. It wasn't a dream, because she couldn't dream, but it was a memory.

The job in Vancouver lasted longer than intended; Coulson kept her informed of the proceedings when the Hydra contact went missing. Trapped in her apartment for over a week, Natasha itched to feel useful. It wasn't any more downtime than the typical post-mission break, but the time alone with her thoughts had made it feel like it stretched on forever.

"Try the theater," she suggested. It was raining outside and she had her forehead pressed against the window to watch people run for shelter in the streets. "You'll find him there."

"You think?" asked Coulson, seated on her sofa.

She nodded. "It's like the report said. He's an avid theatergoer, went backstage more than once, sometimes rented the place out just for personal get-togethers. You'll find him there, either squatting or hanging in the attic. Hydra was after him and people like to die in places they know. Like dogs." Thunder rolled off in the distance.

"I'll have Barton and Sterling look into it. Thanks for the input."

What did it feel like, to be in the womb of another? Could one feel the rain or hear thunder? Did she? Did any of them? Natasha's fingers tapped a staccato beat against the glass as she bit her lip and pondered. She didn't flinch when Coulson's hands closed carefully over her shoulders, she'd heard him coming a mile off, but allowed herself to be steered to sit on the couch. Her hands folded themselves neatly in her lap, even though inside she was shaking right out of her senses.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Coulson asked somewhere to her left.

Staring down at her hands, she shook her head. "What is there to talk about? I miscarried a baby that I didn't need or want. It wasn't even a baby. It was a theoretical baby. An embryo. A two-centimeters-long lump of nothing. Whatever. I'm fine. There's nothing to talk about." Her voice was dull and flat and very carefully neutral, because she could feel Coulson's watchful eye boring into her and the last thing she needed was a SHIELD-ordained psych evaluation.

There was a whisper of Coulson's suit brushing against the sofa cushion as he shifted. "Two centimeters?" His voice was mild, curious, and Natasha took comfort in the fact that he rarely ever spoke in more than a few clipped sentences at a time. It was easier to detach when he didn't go on and on.

"I Googled it. It was about nine weeks."

"You...Googled it."

On a library computer, because she knew that SHIELD monitored all agents' laptops. She nodded. "Wouldn't you want to know, if it had come out of you?" she retorted. "If you were going crazy locked up in your apartment and dying to feel like you were actually doing something productive with your time?" There was another loud clap of thunder; someone outside yelled for their friend. Natasha stretched along the length of the couch and pillowed her head against Phil's side. He scratched her scalp with his well-trimmed fingernails. "I need work."

His hand faltered and paused. "Natasha, you know that Agent Carter said-"

"I know. I don't mean a whole mission. Just recon, anything to keep my mind occupied. Please?"

"Have you considered that thinking it over and coming to peace with what happened might be better for you?" Coulson pointed out, but his hand resumed scratching as though she were a cat. She could feel him thinking and didn't reply. After a few minutes he sighed. "Okay, I have an idea. It should be right down your alley."

Four days later she was in Tony Stark's home, getting an impromptu boxing lesson from Happy Hogan. He was an idiot and a flirt, but not a threat. Definitely not a threat, but she knew what had to be done to catch Stark's attention, so she wrapped her legs around Hogan's neck and brought him down. Pain screamed through her center but she didn't let it show. Even when she got up and could feel blood slowly streaming down her legs. If she were anything, it was a professional. She got what she needed from Stark, planted the right ideas in his mind, and got the hell out as quickly as she could.

In the first bathroom she could find she stripped from the waist down and started scrubbing at the mucky mess drying on her legs, trying not to let herself panic or get hysterical over how quickly this job was spinning out of her control. Even if it really wasn't, even if everything was fine, Natasha couldn't dismiss the feeling of failure chewing away at her gut. A few times her face crumpled, but she didn't weep. There was no reason to. Things were going well, Stark was playing into her hands already, but if Natasha couldn't even control her own body then how could she possibly hope to control anything else?

The bathroom door opened with a creak and someone gasped. "Oh my god!" Potts yelped, and dove out into the hall again. Natasha froze, waiting for everything to go to hell. "Miss Rushman, are you alright?"

Swallowing, Natasha shook herself and went back to cleaning herself up in the sink. Something clicked into place in her chest and she took a deep breath. There was only one way to get close enough to Stark, and that was through Potts. And if Potts didn't like her or thought she was crazy, there was no way this could work. "I-I'm fine," Natalie called back, putting a tremor in her voice. "I'm just...um...could you...come in here, please?"

"Do you need help?"

Natasha allowed a little hiccup of a sob to slip through Natatlie's teeth. "Y-yes."

The door opened again and Potts stepped through, completely composed. "What can I do for you, Miss Rushman?" she asked calmly. Before Natalie could reply, Potts stepped to the dispenser in the wall and pulled out a pad. Natalie took it in shaking hands and practically hugged it to her chest. "I'm sorry about the men. They're idiots, but they mean well."

"O-oh, it's not them, Miss Potts, but thank you," Natalie stammered, her composure slowly crumbling. She sobbed again, quickly covering her mouth as if it were the most mortifying thing that could ever happen. "I'm so sorry, it's just...I-I had a miscarriage. About two weeks ago. I'm fine, really, I'm okay, just..."

Potts' face slackened and softened. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry Natalie. Do you want me to call legal? You should just head home for the rest of the day, it'll be fine, I'll take care of everyth-"

Natalie shook her head, eyes wide and red with innocent horror. "Oh, no, Miss Potts, please! I'd really like to stay. I'm fine, honestly. I...I live alone, and I don't want to...I just want to feel useful. That's why I-I was so happy when I was sent to see Mister Stark today, I feel so helpless and-and horrible, and being able to help you and Mister Stark just makes me feel so much better," she explained, trailing off a little weakly at the end.

Within moments she knew she had the job she needed. Potts had never had a miscarriage, but she knew what it felt like to be helpless and crave to be useful again after a disaster. Natasha had read her file.

"I'll see what I can do," nodded Potts, and left Natalie to clean herself up.

From that moment on, everything went to hell in a hand basket faster than even Natasha could keep up with. Stark was an idiot with a death wish, Hogan a flirt, Potts surprisingly competent, and Justin Hammer another idiot with a power complex. It hit her halfway through Hammer's facility that Coulson and Carter were going to be furious with her - this was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance and analysis, and there she was fighting - but she couldn't bring herself to care. The adrenaline in her veins had finally given her a clear head. She could fight. She could survive. She had survived so much worse and this was child's play.

Even if, once everything was said and done, her adrenaline wouldn't stop, her heart wouldn't slow, and everything went dark.


	3. Chapter 3

She woke up once on the way to the Eureka base; Coulson had apparently been lecturing her the entire time despite her less than conscious state. It was nice to know that he cared so much, and she dropped off again.

Clint was beside her when she woke up again, his hand slowly smoothing its way up and down her right arm, being careful of the IV in the back of her hand. "Keep your eyes closed," he warned her under his breath. "Carter's been waiting outside for you to wake up and she's gonna eat you alive."

"Course she is," Natasha murmured back, keeping her eyes shut as instructed and moving her lips as little as possible. "How bad?"

"Well, you haven't been eating or sleeping, according to Carter's exam. Your blood sugar's gone to shit and you had an anxiety attack after a fight that should have been Amateur Hour," Clint reported. "I'd say it's pretty bad."

"Mm," she agreed.

She heard him shift beside her, his hand's steady stroking momentarily jarred. "You missed a good show in New Mexico. Y'know Thor, the thunder god?"

"Mhm." When had he gone to New Mexico? When did the job end in Vancouver?

"Well, he's real. I almost shot him."

"You drunk, Barton?"

He breathed a laugh. "Okay, how about this? Coulson's met him too."

"Well." That _was_ sort of damning.

"The past few weeks have been weird as hell, Tash." His hand didn't stop at her forearm, creeping all the way up to the junction of her neck and shoulder to brush the long hair from her cheek. "I still owe you a talk, y'know."

Her heart started to gallop with adrenaline at the thought and she shivered. A monitor at her side beeped a warning. "Not now," she replied. "Please, not now."

There was an insistent rapping on the door's glass panel. "Is she awake?!" Carter barked, voice muffled.

"Nah, just kinda muttering," Clint called back over his shoulder. There was a small thump as Carter apparently flung herself at the wall to lean against it and wait petulantly. "Tash, I know this isn't a good time, but we really gotta talk about this soon. I'm going back to New Mexico in a few days. Keeping watch on some space thing, I dunno, Fury hasn't briefed me on it yet. Either way. We should talk before I go."

"Mm," she hummed noncommittally, then opened her eyes to lure Carter in and end the conversation.

The door burst open and the Agent-Doctor stormed in. "_Out_," she snapped at Clint, her face white with suppressed rage.

He smoothed her hair back one last time. "Okay. I'll be back soon. Feel better, take care, all that stuff."

"Thanks." He grinned at her deadpan tone over Carter's shoulder before ducking out. Her anger at being abandoned was an act, though, her relief at evading the talk too strong. She knew what would come out if they went into her episode of hysteria, and she wasn't prepared for that kind of exposure yet.

As soon as the door was shut Carter was rounding on her with ruthless care, yanking pillows into place and checking Natasha's temperature with a snarl on her lips. After about fourteen seconds (not that Natasha was counting) she finally exploded. "I just can't _believe_ how s_tupid_ you are sometimes!" she railed, hands flying with anger. "I _explicitly told you_ that you weren't to be on active duty for three and a half weeks, you _promised_ to stick to it, and what do you do? You _storm a military facility single-handed!_ Are you _really_ that thick?!"

"I wasn't single-handed."

"Oh, that's right, you had that _assclown limo driver_. Well, it's a good thing he was there, because you _clearly_ benefited in the long run!" A note of hysteria crept into Carter's voice, her hair slowly frazzling out of its neat bun.

Natasha sat up and instantly regretted the decision when the world swam around her. "It's not like I had a lot of choice in the matter; it was take it easy or save Stark's life," she argued.

Carter gripped the foot of her bed with white knuckles. "Except you're forgetting the tiny detail that _I specifically told you not to go on field work until I cleared you_," she shouted. "That means desk duty. _No_ recon. _No_ analysis. _Nothing_. Do you want to get an infection? Do you want to develop scar tissue in your uterus? I give you instructions for a _reason_. _Yes_, I know you heal quickly and _yes_, I know your limitations, but _you are still human, Agent Romanov_."

"Am I?" Natasha shot back. "Because sometimes it really doesn't feel that way to me! I'm a puppet, a body used to seduce and extract, a weapon to fire, and when my job is done I'm shoved back into my box like a toy! How does that make me human?"

"You're only as human as you want to be."

"Why do you even care?"

Lab coat flapping behind her like lopsided wings, Carter threw up her hands. "Because I'd like to think that we're _friends_, Natasha! I tell you stories about my kid, you pretend to listen-"

"I do listen."

"Well, fantastic, I'm glad that's cleared up," she snarked. "You let me poke at you and sew you up and put drugs in you, so I thought maybe you would trust my judgment."

"I _do_ trust your judgment," Natasha ground out. Every word Carter said felt like they had physical weight, stacking one after the other on top of her chest until she actually wished Clint would come back and try to talk to her.

'_Phwump!_'

Carter dropped onto the edge of the bed, the anger slowly draining from her now that the initial screaming match was over with. "If you trust my judgment, then I _desperately_ wish you would actually heed it once in a while," she sighed. "I know your weak points, you strengths, and I know your body. But I'd like to think I know _you_, too. What happened to you, it affected you more than you tried to give off. You really aren't as mysterious as you'd like to think, once people learn your tells.

"I wanted to give you the time off work to work through it, not ignore it and lead to _this_. Anxiety and depression are common, especially for spontaneous miscarriages, and I was trying to look out for you. Because I _care_, dumbshit." She shot Natasha a long-suffering look and pinched the sensitive flesh on her thigh.

"_Bitch!_" gasped Natasha, kicking Carter in the side, and they both laughed stiffly. There was still tension hanging thick and wide in the air, but it was vastly alleviated. "How much longer am I stuck here?"

"Until your blood sugar's back to normal, probably just a few hours," replied Carter, rubbing the spot where Natasha kicked her. "You been taking lessons from my kid? That was a dirty kick."

Natasha smiled vaguely at the thought. "You've never actually told me his name, you know," she said.

"Well, you never exactly showed interest," said Carter pointedly. "Jameson. His name's Jameson, or Jamie for short, he's four and completely ridiculous, and _you_, Agent Romanov, are his idol."

Something hot and uncomfortable flooded Natasha's chest cavity, and she shifted into a different position. "He does?" she asked, keeping her tone carefully light and casual.

Knowingly smiling, Carter nodded and leaned back against Natasha's leg. "Oh, yeah. He _loves_ hearing about all the people who give Mommy headaches, you being chief among them," she grinned. "I think you'll be invited to Christmas dinner at this rate."

"Does that worry you?" Natasha asked after a moment's thought. "Knowing what I am?"

"Not in the least." She reached out to feel Natasha's temperature and gave her head a little shove. "I'll come back later to-"

The door swung open and Agent Sitwell dove in. "Agent Carter, we need a consult. Quickly, please." He barely spared Natasha a glance, but Carter rolled her eyes conspiratorially.

"Duty calls."

The door closed and Natasha was left alone again. Instead of being at rest, her mind was even more crowded than before. Thoughts of little blonde boys heaped in pollen-heavy bouquets of roses chased one another through her head as she stared at the wall. Sharon never mentioned having a boyfriend or husband, only ever her mother and grandmother, who helped raise her son so she could keep up with SHIELD's unpredictable hours.

She'd been fairly new to SHIELD when Clint brought Natasha in, the only Agent-Doctor on call at the time, and Natasha hadn't needed to hear the whispers to know that she'd been helped along in the agency by family connections. Carter had looked just as uncomfortable and displaced as Natasha had felt. And because Natasha had an arrow-hole in her arm and a serious case of pneumonia, Carter had had to care for her and know her full physiology. They'd spent days cooped up in the infirmary, doing every test known to man to get a full understanding of how Natasha worked, and by the end Natasha had had no other choice but to trust the viciously kind and careful woman. It was before she'd even fully trusted Clint.

What must it have been like, to hear her son's first cries and know she was on her own? That Jamie would never know his father? Or maybe Sharon had been too preoccupied with the thought that her son cried at all. What was it like to bear a child who breathed and grew and played? The thought twisted in her gut like snakes wrapped around one another in a battling embrace.

Natasha pretended to sleep so Clint wouldn't try to talk to her. They knew each other well enough by then to know when the other was faking, but they never faked without a good reason, and respected that boundary. Clint sat in the same chair as before and resumed his careful smoothing strokes up and down her arm, waiting for her to be ready to talk. But she wasn't sure she would ever, ever be ready to face that darkest part of herself.

That night, in clean white pajamas issued by SHIELD, Natasha looked into the bathroom mirror and had another panic attack. Red, red hair fell over her shoulders like blood on snow, like so much blood, and suddenly she wasn't in the SHIELD base, or even California, anymore. She was on a battlefield in Slovakia, lifetimes ago. It was winter, it was always winter, and Winter, and the blood of men and monsters flowed from between her legs into the snow and she _screamed_-

"Natasha! Natasha, look at me!"

The stench of roses was back, choking her mouth and nose until she couldn't breathe. Natasha was gripping the edges of the sink basin in white-knuckled shaking hands. Clint didn't come into the bathroom, didn't even consider touching her like this, but just yelled until her focus came back to reality. When she finally took a breath, when her seized muscles finally relaxed, when her knees buckled beneath her, then he rushed in and wrapped both arms around her, holding her up because she couldn't.

"Hey," he said, holding her head against his chest. "Hey, hey, Tasha, I've got you. I've got you. It's okay. I've got you."

"I know," she choked through the stinking haze into his shirt. Her fingers were digging into his side like bony knives but he didn't comment on it. They sat on the tiny bathroom floor for what felt like an age, until her legs stopped shaking and her vision no longer swam. "You've always had me."

Without facing any resistance, Clint jostled her up into his arms and carried her the four steps to her bed. He stretched out beside her, draping an arm over her middle and pressing the hard line of his mouth to her shoulder. "Natasha, we need to talk about this," he reminded her. "I'm leaving day after tomorrow for God knows how long, and I don't wanna leave it sitting between us until I get back."

She burrowed her head more firmly into the pillows, curling around herself. "I don't want...I can't talk about it right now," she murmured, hating the way her voice shook. "Please. Come back tomorrow. I'll be better then."

"I don't wanna leave you like this."

"Well, _I_ want to be _alone_, Clint," she snapped.

Clint stilled and was silent for several long moments. "Fine. Suit yourself." Within seconds he was gone. Natasha hugged a pillow against her stomach, a gun in her hand beneath it like a security blanket. Her other hand slowly smoothed itself over the pillow's surface in the same repetitive motion as Clint's hand over her arm earlier.

Morning dawned, bright and too hot, and Natasha dressed without opening her eyes. She pulled a pair of shears from the bathroom drawers and cut off her hair until it was only long enough to brush her earlobes, jutting from her head in uneven clumps and randomly curling in places. It was the first time she'd ever truly been ugly in her life. She was glad. She crept out of the base without leaving a note for Clint or Coulson to find, and used Natalie Rushman's credit card to get back to Malibu. There were a few things in Natalie's apartment that she wanted, and one of SHIELD's tracking devices had been left behind.

"What are you doing back here?"

Natasha turned to face Potts, her expression carefully schooled as she closed the trace in her bag. "Just cleaning up," she replied.

Stark Industries' CEO had an equally stoic look on her face, but there was a grimness to the corners of her mouth that betrayed how she really felt. "So. Your name isn't really Natalie?" Natasha shook her head. "And you're a spy. You were spying on Tony."

"It wasn't for malicious purposes," Natasha replied, and instantly regretted it for the scoff that came out of Potts' mouth. "Think of it as a very thorough background check."

"Wow," nodded Potts, her arms tightly crossed. "You really know what you're doing, don't you, Natalie? Do you mind if I still call you Natalie? Since you haven't offered your real name."

"My name is-"

"I don't want to know." Nodding, Natasha looked down at the bag in her hands rather than at Pepper. If she really wanted to she could have been out of the building in two minutes, but she resisted the urge to flee. "No, what I want to know is if you at all regret what you did to us.

"Do you have any idea how difficult it is for Tony to trust people?" Pepper asked, her voice cold and hard. "He's one of the most singularly paranoid men I've ever met, even before the kidnapping. It took years before he would actually discuss work with me and over six months before he'd let Happy drive him anywhere, which rather defeats the purpose of having a personal driver, don't you think?"

She knew that Pepper Potts never said anything without a reason. Her gut was churning as she waited for the blow to fall, but she didn't allow her apprehension to show.

"Tony was dying. He was in a very vulnerable place, and we were fighting, so he trusted the first person to open themselves for it. That was you, Natalie. He trusted you from the first moment you batted your eyelashes and told him how to celebrate his birthday. Then you showed who you really are and I haven't seen him so shaken in a long time."

"I was-"

"Doing your job, I know," nodded Pepper calmly. "But that doesn't change anything. You manipulated Tony, and you manipulated me - by the way, was that true? Confiding in me about your miscarriage?"

Against her will, Natasha took an unbalanced step back. Her heart thudded loudly in her ears. "Yes. It was true," she said in a voice that felt too small.

Pepper nodded again, shifting her weight onto one foot. She laughed. "I honestly have no idea if that redeems you or makes you even worse. The fact that you used the death of your unborn child to manipulate me? I..." She shook her head and shifted to the other foot, her voice inexplicably softening into something distant and heavy with meaning. "You saved Tony's life. For that, I will always be grateful. But I think I would like you to leave now, and don't bother coming back. For his sake."

Instead of storming out Pepper watched her, eyes positively burning through her skin, and waited.

Taking what she would weakly try to convince herself was her own time, Natasha edged carefully past Pepper and out of the building. The smell of rotting flowers filled her senses, sickeningly sweet enough to make her gag. She stashed the tracker in a SHIELD-designated spot for safe retrieval, then used Natalie's credit card to buy a one-way ticket to Russia. There was an infiltration job there for her, breaking into a weapons trafficking ring.

She and Clint didn't get their talk.


	4. Chapter 4

When the battle was over and the shawarma tucked away, Stark leaned back in his chair, belched, then offered them all a place to sleep for the night in his tower. Natasha was exhausted and sore all over, her head was fuzzy and there was blood in her hair, but none of that mattered. Clint was there, he was alive and no longer compromised and they could get past whatever horrors came after them next. The only thing she wanted in that moment was to curl up beside him in bed and sleep until Armageddon, but they had both agreed long ago to try to keep whatever it was they had between them quiet. No touching in public. Or, at least no touching beyond gripping his arm when he tripped over a piece of rubble, manhandling him into the car, laughing at one of his stupid jokes and pressing against his leg with her own.

"Seriously, Ruski, Bird-brains, Stark Tower is probably one of the least-destroyed buildings in the city. Gotta sleep sometime, right?" Stark insisted when Natasha tried to get him to take them back to SHIELD. Clint had stiffened at her side, and that was the only reason why she complied with what Stark wanted. Clint wasn't ready to go back to SHIELD and the people he'd attacked.

She met her partner's eye across the back seat before nodding. "Fine."

The moment the car turned en route to Stark Tower apprehension rose in Natasha's gut and made her chest shudder. She had kept good on her promise not to go near the billionaire after the disaster in Malibu months ago, hadn't had any reason to go back to that side of the country, yet was now steadily on her way straight to his home. It was too much to hope that Potts wouldn't be there, either.

Clint's hand brushed against hers. "Tasha?" he asked. "You okay? You're looking a little glassy."

"You're seriously asking _me?_" retorted Natasha, tangling her fingers in her own hair. She yanked her hand away and curled her knees up. It felt like she was shaking apart at the seams, the adrenaline crash setting in. "I'm just tired."

From the passenger seat, Banner - wrapped in a shock blanket to cover himself - shot her a calculating look. A monster's roar echoed in her ears and she had to stop herself trembling. Even if Banner was fine, if he was a perfectly fine man who would never willingly hurt anyone, the Hulk was a monster of destruction. She turned to look out the window, trying not to think of how similar they were and shutting her eyes against the chaos in her head. The car was so quiet compared to her own internal destruction.

It was no surprise that Pepper was outside the tower, waiting for Tony's safe return after the past few days' mess. "_You idiot!_" she half-screamed and sobbed, running to Stark and flinging her arms around him.

"Hey, hey, Pep, be ginger, please," replied Tony, hugging her back. He was just barely able to stay upright and so the couple leaned on each other, held each other up, and Natasha turned away so she wouldn't have to watch them. Instead she watched Clint. He was moving gingerly to protect his broken ribs and very reluctantly allowing Banner to prod at him. "Pepper...did you hear about Coulson?"

Clint made a tiny sound of pain from turning around so quickly. "What about Coulson?" he demanded.

At the look on Stark's face, something cold and hard woke itself up in Natasha's gut. "You didn't hear over the comms," Stark said. He looked at Natasha.

"I was taking care of Clint. I didn't..." allow herself to listen, to let it sink in until she knew Clint was alright.

"Tony?" Pepper was looking from Stark to Natasha now, her brows furrowed.

Stark hesitated, shifting from foot to foot and biting his lip, and finally Rogers stepped forward. "Agent Coulson was killed, ma'am," he said. His uniform was torn and burnt and his cowl was gone; he looked like a battlefield.

There was a strange sound to Natasha's right, and suddenly everyone was turning to find Clint fallen on the ground. Banner forgot about decency to rush to his side and Natasha could only watch. Watch, because there was a swarm of bees waking up between her ears, watch, because her stomach was churning, watch, because she couldn't remember the last meaningful thing she'd said to the man who treated her like a wayward daughter instead of an agent under his care. She had forgotten all about Coulson in the chaos of battle.

Clint asked, "How?" in a weak and shaking voice. He was afraid that he was the one to do it.

"Loki. Stabbed him with that spear of his."

Suddenly, Natasha was certain that she was going to vomit. She had touched that spear, used it to close the portal, seen the blood on its handle and hadn't known. She hadn't known that it was Coulson's blood. A frighteningly animalistic sound wrenched its way from her throat but she allowed herself no other outward reaction. Pepper was staring at her. They all were staring at her, all but Clint and Banner, and before she could betray herself further she turned on her heel and left. There was nothing for her there anyway.

"Agent Romanov!"

She broke into a run and vanished among the crowds. Even in her SHIELD uniform she had ways of disappearing when it was what she wanted.

Turning a corner, Natasha was stopped by a wall of rubble. Instead of going another direction she just sank down on top of a large enough piece, holding her head in her hands and trying not to shake right out of her skin. Coulson had barely been half her age, but acted like a father. He hadn't been afraid to tell her she was being an idiot, or to manhandle her into eating or sleeping, or to tell her no when her mind was set on a mission. He was the only person who knew when she and Clint fell together, and he didn't tell a soul.

He had wanted to talk to her about the miscarriage too, but she had brushed him off. She was always brushing off the people that mattered.

"_Agent Romanov?_"

Rogers' voice was small and tinny, coming from her pocket, and after a moment's fumbling she pulled out her communications earpiece. "I'm fine," she said into it. "Just needed some air."

"_Are you sure? You seemed pretty shaken up_."

"I'm fine," she repeated. Her voice almost sounded genuine to her own ears.

Rogers released a breath and sounded his age. "_If you say so. I think it would be better if you came back, though, Agent. Barton's been asking for you and Stark's...well. I just think it would be a good idea_," he said slowly.

There was a tiny pop in her ear as another comm tuned in. "_Tasha? Where'd you go?_" Clint called over the radio waves.

She sighed. "I'm on my way back, Barton, don't worry," she replied, and switched off her comm. She just needed a few more minutes to gather herself, and then...what? Go back to normal? When had her life ever been normal? When had she ever been anything but someone else's plaything? Someone's puppet? An empty shell meant to be filled with everything her next mark desired?

There was a shifting of rubble and she raised her head. A string bean of a young man in large spectacles was looking at her, an old-fashioned camera in his hands. "Hey, you're one of those superheroes," he called tentatively. "Right?"

"I'm not a superhero," she replied dully, thinking of Agent Carter. "I'm...just human."

The kid's camera clicked a few times. Once with flash. She glared at him, but he was unabashed and stepped even nearer. "Can I get your name? For my school paper? Please?" he asked. There was something so honest and skittish about the boy, like there was more he wanted to say but couldn't get himself to do it, that Natasha took pity on him.

"Black Widow."

She only had so much pity to spare.

"Tell me yours. It's only fair."

Hesitating, the kid looked down at the camera in his long hands before smiling at her in the fading light. "Parker, ma'am. Peter Parker." He clicked another picture and waved goodbye. "Thank you!"

Stark was waiting for her when she stepped out of the elevator, arms crossed and a stern look on his face. Behind him, further in the room, Potts and Rogers were on the sofa, pretending to be absorbed in their conversation even while they cast her concerned looks. "Is Clint okay?" Natasha asked, saying the first thing to come to mind that deflected attention from herself.

"He's fine, Itsy Bitsy," waved Stark. Before Natasha could so much as tell him not to call her one of his ridiculous nicknames there was a pair of thick arms wrapped around her. She stiffened and gasped, but Stark didn't let her go. "I'm sorry. I didn't think you were friends with Coulson. And, you know, thanks for closing the portal and saving all our lives. Whatever."

If he felt her start to tremble he didn't mention it. "Please let go of me," she replied, and he let her go. Before he could say anything else, though, she reached and snatched his wrist. Potts' eyes drilled a warning brand into her but she ignored it. "Stark, I. You know that I..."

He patiently waited. There were bruises around both of his eyes.

"I'm sorry. For spying on you," she finally managed to say. "I'm-"

"Forgiven," nodded Stark, grinning his shit-eating grin and momentarily gripping her shoulders. "Isn't that right, Pepper?"

The pair had an entire wordless conversation in one glance, and Pepper stood with a gracious smile. "Of course. Thank you, Natalie-_Natasha_. Natasha. Sorry," she corrected, offering her hand to shake without any sign of embarrassment for the slip. "All of the Avengers are welcome in Stark Tower."

Natasha looked between them, pulling her hand from Pepper's. "But I'm not..." she trailed off and shook her head. She wasn't an Avenger, not really. That hadn't been a part of the plan. She and Clint and Coulson were just the handlers, the round-up on the sidelines, never soldiers, never heroes. Especially not Natasha. She wasn't anyone's hero; she was little more use for good than Loki's scepter.

But Rogers was standing up too, smiling at her like Potts but with more genuine warmth and gratitude, like they were really friends on a team, and something small inside of her broke to pieces.

"Where's Clint?" she asked in lieu of finishing what she'd started to say.

The corner of Stark's mouth twitched upwards slightly. Part of his mustache had been burned away. "Thirteen floors down, there are a few apartments to pick from that should be mostly untouched. Go nuts and text JARVIS how you like your eggs in the morning. We're taking Reindeer Games back to Oz tomorrow."

Without acknowledging that she'd even heard, Natasha returned to the elevator at a near run and jabbed the button for the designated floor. Her vision tunneled until there was only one thing in her sights at a time and she had to guide herself along the hall with one hand. A brief look into each apartment was sufficient to tell her which was occupied by whom, and within minutes she'd found where Clint was staying and inserted herself in his bedroom. "Clint?" she called into the gloom.

He was sitting up, staring at the wall with slackened features. "Phil's dead."

"I know." She crept into the room and sat beside him, not looking at him.

"How long did you know?"

Their hands brushed on top of the covers. "Since Fury called it. You were still unconscious, and...I didn't have time to really think about it. Didn't give myself the time. Not until Stark mentioned it." Her fingers laced through his and squeezed.

When Clint next spoke his breath was hot against her ear. "I'm surprised you're here. After the past few months, I thought that maybe you changed your mind about me. And then this whole mind-control thing happened, and...I dunno," he muttered with a little shrug. "Why'd you leave like that, Tasha? Did I do something? Was I not good enough for you? Because if you want out, you don't have to take it easy on the guy with the concussion. I'll let you go right now, and-"

"Clint, we lost a baby," she interrupted him, her voice sounding too loud in her own ears, and Clint went still. The air in the room thickened and curdled and Natasha's eyes found the tasteful painting of a rose on the wall. She stared it down as if it had done her a personal offense. "We lost a baby that we didn't know existed, and even if we weren't planning or trying for it, it was still a loss. One that I felt too strongly. I should have talked to you, but I just-I just couldn't bring myself to do it. And I'm sorry, but we're spies and assassins and maybe that life just wasn't meant for us."

There was a beat, two, three, and Clint's arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her in against him even though it had to have irritated his ribs. "I'm sorry I pushed you like that, Tasha. You were just so distant and I worried that I was losing you," he admitted. "I just wish you would've come to me sooner. You can't hide this stuff from me, Tash, and you...that night, you said...that you wanted it."

Still staring at the rose painting, Natasha gave a curt nod. "I did say that," she agreed.

"Did you mean it?"

"I..." She shook her head, voice caught in her throat.

"Tasha."

When his arm tightened around her, she nodded. "I think so," she told the painting. "I think so."

After that night, whether they liked it or not, Natasha and Clint were part of the strangest family on earth. They all went their separate ways once Loki was back on Asgard, but separating came with promises to reunite, whether it be in a week, a month, or the next time the Earth was threatened. A mission took Clint and Natasha to a village outside Volgograd, Banner flew away to help some crisis or another in Africa, Rogers took off on his motorcycle to familiarize himself with the new America he'd woken up to, and Stark returned to play in his tower. And piece it back together, but that was hardly the point.

"Where was it you said you were born? St. Petersburg?" Clint asked when the mission was through and they had a few hours to kill before catching their ride.

_Stalingrad_ danced on the tip of her tongue, but she reigned herself in. "Volgograd," she replied lightly. "Why?"

He shrugged. "Well, you've seen where I was raised. I thought maybe you could return the favor, if you wanted."

She didn't want. Not in the least. But Natasha had opened herself up for this the moment she'd allowed herself to talk - hell, the moment she'd dropped her gun and gave in to the pain of an arrow pinning her to the ground. The moment she looked into Clint's eyes and dared him to kill her, but received only the agony of him wrenching his arrow from her shoulder and the warmth of his arms picking her up in return.

"Okay," she agreed.

Of course the actual place where she'd been born was gone, burned down in the thirties by Germans, but there was a newer apartment building - still abandoned, but newer - in its place that she claimed as her own. With Clint's hand grasped in hers she pointed with both of their index fingers. "That window, up there? That's the one by mother threw me from, into the arms of a man in the street. He was KGB, and he thought the Red Room was a ballet school," she explained, "until they recruited him, too."

Ivan Petrovitch. Long dead now, of course, even after the Red Room gave over the serum that saved his life. Both of their lives. She remembered him fondly and Clint held her hand a little tighter.

"Let's go in."

There was a conspiratorial glint in his eyes that had Natasha on edge, and she shook her head. "No. No, that's definitely not a good-"

But he was already pulling her toward the boarded-up door, grinning to himself like a little boy as they broke and entered and crept up the creaking stairs to her falsified childhood home. It either looked nothing like the place she'd lived or exactly like it, for as well as she remembered. A bathroom and a main room. A tiny fireplace in the corner. Paint fading and peeling on the rocking chair in the corner. Rag dolls lying forgotten under layers of dust. For a moment Natasha allowed herself to imagine this as her home, where her mother and father died, even though it couldn't have been the same place. Clint probably knew it too but pretended for both their sakes. They looked around and sighed in the quietude.

"It's sad, seeing a home go untouched," Clint said after a few minutes.

She nodded, inspecting a bouquet of artfully dried roses on the wall with arms crossed over her middle. They looked too fresh for the decay of the place.

There was a creak of floorboards, a whisper of a breeze, and in the next breath Natasha had grabbed Clint and dragged him to the floor before a peppering of bullets buried itself in the drywall.


	5. Chapter 5

"We need immediate backup in Volgograd," Clint snarled into his radio, diving behind the tattered sofa for the illusion of safety while Natasha covered the door. "_I repeat, immediate backup is needed in Volgograd, the Widow and I are under attack!_"

An arm bearing a gun snaked through the doorway and Natasha shot at the wrist. A metallic '_ping!_' sounded and the bullet had ricocheted. Cold dread pooled in Natasha's stomach as she dove for cover. There was something too familiar about-

Clint had just had enough time to string back an arrow when the biotic arm gripped Natasha and dragged her from their lackluster hiding place. She shot blind for the first time in years, took the kick in the wrist with a grunt and crunch, and her gun went skittering away.

The Winter Soldier kept his boot on top of Natasha's broken wrist and grinned down at her. "Natalia, it has been far too long," he purred, staring her down with the barrel of his gun.

"Winter," she breathed, terror creeping into her voice. "How did you find me?"

"I never lost you, dollface."

Natasha curled her legs and vaulted them up into the Winter Soldier's gut, dislodging him just enough to roll away before he could shoot her. "Hawkeye, get out of here!" she shouted, scrabbling for the fallen gun with her uninjured left hand. Clint ignored her, skirting around the edges of the room and shooting at Winter, who caught the arrow in his metal shoulder without so much as a dent. The room was too small for any of his trick arrows without killing them as well. They would have to lure the greatest assassin who ever lived out into the open.

There was only one way that Natasha knew to do that. She stood, cradling her broken wrist, and stepped into clear view. "The Red Room is gone, Winter. How did you survive?" she asked. "I woke up in the cryo bay alone, the base was destroyed, everyone dead..."

Smiling grimly, the Winter Soldier dropped his gun to his hip but didn't holster it, ready to shoot Natasha if Clint shot him. "I woke up _first_," he laughed, and swung out with his bionic arm. Natasha ducked and rolled between his legs, barely dodging a kick to her ribs, and when she kicked up Winter caught her foot and _twisted_. Pain rocketed like a bolt of lightning all the way up to her hip but she didn't gasp, just pulled through the agony until Winter was thrown off balance.

Clint's bow caught the Soldier around the head, too close to fire an arrow but just close enough to get a good hit in. Even so, Winter only stumbled and dropped Natasha's leg to the apartment floor with a thud that she felt all the way to her core. With one smooth pivot at the waist, Winter swung at Clint. He ducked the first, but the second with Winter's human arm caught him right in the nose. Natasha flinched as he hit the wall and went down, momentarily dazed.

"Where'd you find this doofus, Natalia?" Winter laughed as blood poured down Clint's chin. "Such a cute, loyal dog. Is this what took you from those who built you? Did you really think you could escape us? Defect and join their merry band, birth this dum-dum's tow-headed babies like a good barefoot wife? Did you really think our fathers would allow it after the mess you made in Slovakia?"

His bionic arm seized her by the throat, raised her into the air, and long fingers dug into the wall so she couldn't escape. There was his chance, Natasha trapped, injured and virtually helpless beneath his hand, but he didn't strike, not yet. He loomed in close and grinned. "You will _never_ bear a child that breathes," he hissed. Flecks of saliva dotted her cheeks and she stared into his eyes with something like honest fear. "They will drop from you, one by one, bloody blue _lumps_ of silent flesh, until your own guts fall out with them. _That_ is the reward for your disloyalty. And _this_-" he raised his gun and pressed the barrel between her eyes, "this is the prize for your defection. _Do Svidaniya_, my little spider..."

"Winter," Natasha gasped before his finger could reach the trigger. "Winter, my darling, please, one last kiss."

The Winter Soldier paused, and a sickening grin spread over his hard features. "Is this love, Natalia?" he sneered, pressing in harder with the barrel.

She snapped her hips outward, despite the pain it brought, until he moved in closer. Felt his breath on her cheek and fought back a shiver. Something shifted in his dark eyes, something deeply buried and very human, and she could see the murderous resolve beginning to wane. When their lips brushed she whispered, "_Lyubovʹ dlya detey_," and the Winter Soldier fell like a marionette on broken strings. His gun discharged as he went down and burrowed a hole into the wall only inches from her head. The claws of the robotic arm were too heavy to remain buried in the drywall, and the shards dragged across Natasha's throat. Her breathless voice filled with girlish fear was replaced with her usual aplomb. "Get a tranq in him, fast."

There was only a moment before Clint struggled dazedly to his feet, pulled a trick arrow from where they'd scattered on the floor, and stuck it into the Winter Soldier's thigh. "Thought he was just an urban legend," he muttered, turning to Natasha. "You okay?"

For probably the first time in a very long time, Natasha told the truth and shook her head. Her right wrist was only dully throbbing, but her right leg was completely useless. She didn't even dare try putting weight on it and was still breaking into a cold sweat. "I think my knee's dislocated," she said faintly.

Clint didn't need any further incentive. He roughly wiped the blood from his mouth before picking his way over the Winter Soldier's body and wrapping an arm around her waist. "Come on. Sofa. Help's on its way." The move from wall to tattered sofa was slow and agonizing, gripping Clint's shoulder for dear life as she half-hopped across the dusty floor. By the time they had made it the four feet she was drenched with sweat and black spots swam in her eyes. Her breathing was shallow. After a few moments prodding the swollen flesh of her knee, Clint nodded to himself. "Hold on tight, Tasha."

She gasped and only just managed not to writhe in pain when he extended her leg and pushed her patella back into place. "Fuck, Clint!" she whispered, too breathless to call out.

"Sorry, sorry..."

His radio crackled to life and Natasha forced herself to sit up. They tried to pretend they didn't feel a sinking sensation when Coulson's voice didn't reach them. "Hawkeye, Black Widow, you've been located. ETA five minutes. Are either of you injured?" their new, faceless handler asked.

One hand smoothing hair back from her clammy forehead, Clint picked up his radio. "Widow's got a dis- and relocated knee and a broken wrist; my nose is broken," he reported back. "We've also got the Winter Soldier in custody."

There were several long seconds of white noise. "Are you certain?" asked their handler, softly.

Clint and Natasha met eyes. She didn't have to look at Winter's body before she nodded.

"One hundred percent, ma'am." He turned down the volume on his radio so they couldn't hear or be heard by base. "Natasha, how did you shut him off?" he asked.

"Trigger phrase. A specially designed chain of words...used to shut the soldiers on and off as needed. We all had one individualized for us in the Red Room."

"And you just happened to know the Winter Soldier's? The key phrase to shut down the Red Room's ultimate secret weapon?"

She shook her head. "He knew mine, too, but they're defunct now," she explained, her former trepidation beaten down by pain and exhaustion. Keeping it all a secret no longer seemed to matter. Now that the Winter Soldier was in custody, everything would come to light sooner or later, and she wanted Clint to hear it from her first. "We were partners, he and I. The Red Room paired us together in every way possible. Put the memories of a happy and loving marriage in our minds to make us complacent. We were indestructible." Something glassy and tinged with sentiment crept into her voice, but she tore it away like a bandage.

There was pain in Clint's face, and she could see him pushing it away too. They both knew that life was behind her, even if Clint didn't really know the half of it.

Outside in the street, a car rolled to a stop.

* * *

When Natasha was brought to the Helicarrier infirmary to have her wrapped wrist put into a cast, Carter was waiting. There was no fury on her pale face this time, only shock and worry. Everyone in SHIELD knew of the Winter Soldier, knew how dangerous he was, knew that the only agents to have ever seen him had gone home in a box fifty years back. "Thank God, Natasha," Carter said, forgetting all doctor-patient pretenses and wrapping her arms around Natasha's shoulders, being ginger with her injuries. "Oh, crap, when I heard what happened, I thought..."

She took a deep breath and backed away, smiling tremulously. "Sorry. I know you're not big on touching, but...anyway, okay, come on, let's get a cast on that wrist. How's the knee? You should at be on crutches if not in a wheelchair, you first-class idiot! What the hell am I going to do with you...?"

Natasha took the benevolent insults in stride, smiling to herself. While Carter unwrapped her wrist to set it and prepare the cast she allowed her mind to wander. The Winter Soldier claimed never to have lost her, to have kept tabs on her even through the years after the Red Room was dissolved, and though a large part of her was convinced that she would have been dead long before then if that were true, another piece of her head _knew_ it to be true. She and Winter, they had had ways of knowing one another even more intimately than they knew themselves. When she broke off from that life, from the Red Room and started making a name for herself in other ways, she broke off with her connection to him, but he had never lost it. Never lost her.

_You will never bear a child that breathes._

"Hey!" she hissed when Carter set her broken wrist.

Carter shot her a look. "Oh, man up, I gave birth with less-"

They met eyes. Nothing else was said until Natasha was set to go with a bottle of strong painkillers. Then Carter chewed her ear off about taking it easy, laying off her knee, finding a friend to make sure she didn't accidentally overdose on oxycodone. "You have someone to stay with?"

Her initial thought was of Clint, but then another name and place entered her mind. "Yeah, I do," she nodded.

She woke up after the first night in Stark Tower flailing, icy water running down her neck, a scream and the suffocating stench of roses in her throat. Pepper Potts stood over her with an empty glass. "It's just me," she said. "I'm sorry for the water, but I was advised against touching you. Bad dream?"

Natasha sat up, still catching her breath and grimacing when her knee started to throb from the excessive movement. "That was probably a good idea. Not touching me. Who told you? Clint?" she asked, voice hoarse from crying out. Pepper nodded and filled the glass in the bathroom. When she returned there were two small white pills sitting in her palm. It was a sign of how deluded by trust and her injuries Natasha had become, taking the pills and water without batting an eyelash.

"I hope I didn't get your cast wet; I aimed carefully but you were pretty animated," Pepper continued, sitting on the edge of the bed and reading from her tablet. After a few minutes, once the oxycodone made the pain fuzzy around the edges, she asked, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not even a little bit."

Pepper nodded again and returned to the BBC World News app. When she finished reading she tucked away her phone, then offered Natasha a hand. "You should eat something with that, or you'll get nauseous." Natasha clumsily secured a brace around her injured knee, still getting the hang of the thing, before taking Pepper's hand and using her as a makeshift crutch to get to her feet. Then Pepper handed over her actual crutch and they hobbled slowly to the elevator.

"Hey, she lives!" cheered Tony when they stepped out on a different floor. It wasn't the penthouse, too big and with too much open space to be, but Natasha didn't remember it. "Welcome to the communal lounge, complete with full kitchen, two bathrooms, and a media room. This way we won't have to fight over whose apartment to dick around in every night. Nice, huh?" He looked closely at her. "You look like shit, Romanov."

"We can't all follow your strict moisturizing routine every night," Natasha shot back, but found herself smiling as she sank gratefully into a chair across from Tony. Pepper pushed over a chair for her to elevate her leg. "Oh. Thanks."

"Steve will be joining us again tomorrow afternoon," Pepper told Tony, lining up a few cereal boxes along the edge of the table. Natasha looked at the clock; it was two in the afternoon. "Bruce is coming back on Thursday, and Natasha? An Agent Carter called, says she's your doctor? She would like to come by tomorrow to check your knee with an associate of hers, Jameson. Think you'll be feeling up for it?"

Without even a moment's hesitation Natasha replied, "That's fine." She poured a small bowl of frosted shredded wheat, eating it dry the way she liked.

"She wanted me to make sure you were alright with her associate coming along."

"Yeah, it's...fine." If she claimed not to be at all anxious she would be a liar, but knowing that Agent Carter trusted Natasha enough to allow her four year old son to meet her was almost nice. Even if children tended to make her intensely uncomfortable. Usually it was Clint who handled any kids if they came up on jobs. "It'll be fine."

And it was, oddly enough. Natasha kept to the floor that had been set aside for her when Stark Tower was remodeled - the biggest place she'd ever lived in all her life - and so heard Sharon coming all the way from the elevator. Or rather, she heard Jamie. Natasha never thought that the sound of a child's laughter could be meant only for her, could be a gift, and when a golden-haired boy with large brown eyes and a grin missing teeth came barreling in ahead of his mother, she smiled.


	6. Chapter 6

Just inside the door, Jameson paused. The smile on his mouth faded and his wide eyes widened further and he demurred around the strange woman he'd never seen in person before. Tiny pale hands fluttered anxiously. Natasha tried to look inviting with her leg propped on the sofa and a black cast on her arm. Jamie's lips had just begun to curl upward when Sharon ran in after him.

"Jamie, what did I-? Hi, Natasha, I hope this is okay, he's just wanted to meet you for so long and it seemed like you could use a little pick-me-up after the past few days, so I figured, 'Hey, why not?' right? He's really a good kid despite all I say about him, honest. Aren't you, Squirt?" Sharon's hands snaked from around her son's shoulders to tickle his middle, making him squirm and laugh and run to hide behind the couch. "Sweetie, show Auntie Spider your new backpack."

"No!"

Natasha craned her neck to look at him over the back of the couch. He giggled and scuttled to the other end. "I would really like to see it," she said, uncertain of how to talk to a four-year-old. Should she over-enunciate? Or talk more like him, with a little mush-mouth?

Slowly, diving back and laughing every time Natasha made direct eye contact, Jamie was coaxed out from behind the couch. Rather than taking off his backpack he simply spun to stick it in Natasha's face. He mumbled something incoherent and toddlerish, yanking on the red straps to make the pack bounce.

"Captain America," Natasha nodded, trying to sound approving while staring at a cartoonified version of her teammate. "Who gave you that, your mommy?"

Jamie shook his head. "No!" he laughed like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. Sharon rolled her eyes.

"Then who?" asked Natasha. With a few pokes and prods Sharon got her son to turn around, smiling shyly at his Auntie Spider. "Was it...Santa?"

That got her another belly laugh. "No ess not!"

She found herself grinning. Instead of actually trying to figure out where the backpack came from, she asked after the Easter Bunny, the Boogeyman, Thumbelina, and the Jolly Green Giant. Every time Jamie laughed, working himself up until he was laying on the floor, kicking his feet and snorting. She met Sharon's eyes and smiled, feeling as though her chest was stuffed with cotton. "Okay, I give up. Who gave you your backpack?" she asked.

Still breathless with laughter, Jamie grinned up at her. "Nana."

"_My_ Nana," Sharon corrected, picking her son off the floor. "Your Great Nana."

"Greynana."

"She just _loves_ Captain America," smiled Sharon. She pulled off Jamie's pack for him and unzipped it, taking out a coloring book and some crayons. "Why don't you go color while I talk to Auntie Spider about her leg, okay Munchkin? Sit right there so I can see you. Thanks, love."

The next twenty minutes of Natasha's life were zeroed around the pain in her knee. It was like there was a black hole there, stretching and twisting her down into that one point until nothing else existed or mattered at all. Sharon carefully flexed and straightened her knee, moving her leg into different positions, evaluating how bad the damage was by feel alone. Natasha stared at the high ceiling and tried not to swear with Jamie nearby.

Finally, blessedly, Sharon finished her exam and helped Natasha strap up her leg again. "Well, I don't think you'll need surgery," she decided. "With your healing ability it should be about three weeks with the brace, five before you're back to low-level work, probably eight before you're at a hundred percent again. That's not bad at all, Natasha."

"Isn't it?" Natasha asked, sitting up and taking a drink from the water bottle Sharon offered. "Your boy's been awfully quiet."

As if on cue, the elevator dinged and Jamie's squealing laughter came pealing toward them. "Uh, hi there," Steve said from the door, a tiny blonde boy slung over his shoulder like a sack of flour. "Did somebody lose this?" He was laughing a little to himself, which was at least a good sign.

"Jameson Eric Carter, what have you been up to?!" sighed Sharon, getting up to pull her son from Steve's arms. "I'm so sorry if he was bothering you, he's so quiet we didn't even hear him run off! _You_, little Munchkin, have some 'splainin' to do."

"_Mommy, no!_" protested Jamie as Sharon slung him over her own shoulder and started tickling him. He screamed and kicked and Steve laughed. "Mommy, ess Capamerica!"

Natasha watched, sipping contentedly on her water, as the puzzle pieces fell into place in Sharon's head. Her eyes widened and she grinned at Steve, but there was something strangely familiar to her gestures when she set Jamie down and he dove behind the couch again. She shoved her flyaway hair behind an ear and offered her hand. "Hello."

"That's quite the boy you have, ma'am," Steve said with a nod to the couch. "I'm Steve Rogers."

"So you are." Sharon blushed and shook her head. "Sorry. Wow, that probably sounded terrible. I'm sorry. It's just... Yeah, he's quite the handful." She shook her head again, smiling breathlessly.

A long moment stretched out. Natasha shifted into a more comfortable position and made a face at Jamie over the back of the couch so it wouldn't look like she was eavesdropping. At the same time, Steve was staring a little too intently at Sharon, his brow furrowing, to the point where she touched her cheek in the worry that there was something smeared across her nose. "This is going to sound very strange, considering that I've been out of commission for seventy years or so, but...have we met?" Steve asked. "You look awfully familiar."

The hand on her face dropped, replaced by a beaming smile and an embarrassed blush. When Sharon spoke, it was with the deliberately casual air of someone who had practiced that particular line a thousand times in front of a mirror. "Well, this will probably sound even stranger as a response, but I've been told I look a lot like my grandmother. Except the hair. I'm blonde and she was brunette. I mean before she went gray! She's still, uh, around. I mean, not around _here_, around, but she's still, um, alive, you know?"

Both made painfully embarrassed faces and flushed red. Sharon rubbed the back of her neck and blurted, "My name's Sharon! Sharon...Sharon _Carter_. Steve, my grandma's Peggy Carter." She bit her lip.

And the penny dropped. Steve's eyes flickered to the couch where Jamie - the great-grandchild of Steve's long lost love - was still hidden. He breathed out, "_Golly_," before making an odd sort of laughing sound and wrapping Sharon in a hug. They were both a little misty-eyed when they drew away. "You really do look just like her. Except the hair," he nodded in agreement, and Sharon reached up to pat her frazzled bun. "Not that that's bad! I-I think you're lovely!"

"Thank you!" Sharon practically shouted back at him. They stared at each other, petrified into near-offensive embarrassment.

Her eyes flicking between them, Natasha had to school her expression and fight not to laugh. "Hey Jamie, will you tell me a story?" she asked, giving Steve and Sharon a chance to talk in private if they wanted to.

Jamie stuck one eye out from behind the end of the sofa. "No."

"Aw, please?" she pleaded, stretching out one hand. "Your mommy told me that you have the best stories."

Sharon suddenly snapped out of the nebulous void of embarrassment to look at Natasha. "Oh, don't, he'll talk your ear right off, Natasha," she warned, but Natasha shook her head.

"I don't mind. I'm tired and I could use a bedtime story. What do you say, Jamie? Come sit by me?" She scooted up on the couch until there was a little space for Jamie to sit, then patted on the cushion until he crept closer. "Will you tell me a story if Mommy and Steve go be silly somewhere else?"

"Hey!" they both protested.

Natasha waved them off, never tearing her eyes off of Jamie, who nodded. His lower lip stuck out.

"Well, I can see we aren't needed here," Sharon shrugged, and with a gesture led Steve to the hall.

"Wossapon' time spaceship wif' colors an' tees. Mommy sess 'no no go way!' Inden a dinasow! Dinasow was big, big, big! An' he had claws and pony teef! An' a nose wif googy booguhs an'-an'-an' pianos. An' the pianos were scawy! Bu_den_a monster come an' he has graybig ears an' a billion _billion_ eyes, and he stink like _poop!_ Budena tree! An' the tree sess 'rawrawrawrawr!' and east 'em..."

The child's nonsensical story washed over her and she shut her eyes. Jamie trailed off. "Aunnie Spyer sleeping?" he whispered.

"No, no, I'm just listening," Natasha replied. "Come closer, I can't hear you."

There was a beat of silence, two, then Jamie's warmth and weight rocked up onto the cushions. He curled against her front and slung over an arm to keep from falling, and after a few seconds Natasha carefully wrapped her casted arm around his back for extra security. She could feel his tiny heart fluttering against her own. He was soft and smelled like crayon wax.

"Tell me another story," she whispered imploringly. Jamie started to mumble a new string of unrelated words and events and she shut her eyes to listen. While he recited his story she allowed herself the brief fantasy that the child in her arms was her own, a child of four with waxy clean skin and salty hair and wide, sweet eyes above rosebud lips.

_They will drop from you, one by one, bloody blue lumps of silent flesh, until your own innards fall out with them._

When she shivered, Jamie patted her arm.

* * *

"Do you think I could see her again?" Steve asked, hands buried deep in his pockets. Cautious hope shone from him like a beacon.

"Oh, yeah, Steve, totally! Gran would love that."

He smiled. "A-and I'd really like to meet the rest of your family too, of course! Your parents, and your-and your husband, I'm sure they're all fine folks," he added. If gentlemen still carried hats he would have been twisting his between anxious hands, especially when something stiff and trembling crossed Sharon's face.

"Uh! I-I'm not...I'm not married," she said almost apologetically, briefly flashing her ringless hand. "Jamie's dad, uh-"

"I'm sorry," Steve gushed at once, face burning bright. "Really, I'm sorry, that's my fault, I shouldn't have assumed-"

"Well, I mean, it's an understandable mistake-"

"It's just that things are so-"

"You're from a totally different time, things are-"

"Different."

"Yeah."

They smiled tremulously at each other in the silence that yawned between them. It was broken by the trill of her phone ringing, and she sighed. "Sorry, sorry, that's work...hello?" She frowned. "Already? That was fa-...are you sure" Dark eyes flickered to look at Steve. They both forced smiles. "Okay. I'll be in first thing tomorrow... No, I'm out with my kid today. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Bye."

"Everything okay?" asked Steve.

Sharon, tucking her phone away, looked up with unconvincing surprise. "Hm? Oh, yeah, yeah, fine," she dismissed. "Just work stuff. They've ID'd the Winter Soldier."

"Oh. Who is h-?"

"I should probably get the kid home," she interrupted, hands braced on her hips, "before he talks poor Natasha to death. She needs to rest anyway. Um, I'll talk to my grandma about having you over, okay? She'll be thrilled, seriously. I'll call you? Or-shoot, um. Okay. Here's _my_ phone number, call me in the next few days and we'll set something up when I don't have work. It was really, _really_ nice to meet you, Steve. Seriously." She grasped Steve's hand and shook it, warm and firm and completely honest, before vanishing into the apartment again.

Steve stared down at the line of blue numbers inked out on his palm, a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach. He shook it off and went to the elevator.

Natasha was roused from her light doze by her own voice, gasping and jerking on the couch with Sharon's hands on her shoulders. Jamie was a few feet behind her, wearing his backpack again and shuffling as he watched her. "You were talking in your sleep," Sharon said, looking worried. Natasha didn't need to touch to know there were tears mingling with the sweat on her face. "Natasha?"

"Hm?"

"Who's Rose?"

It felt like a slap in the face, yet despite her disorientation Natasha kept herself composed. "Why?" she asked.

There was a long quiet moment. Sharon seemed to be thinking very hard, an arm around Jamie's shoulders. "No reason," Sharon finally decided. "Jamie, kiss Auntie Spider bye-bye."

Tiny arms looped around Natasha's neck and she awkwardly hugged Jameson back, smelling his waxy skin and salty hair and yearning for a life she never even had the chance to lose. "Sowwy you so sad, Aunnie Spyer," he mumbled. It took a few moments to decipher, but when Natasha understood she hugged him a little tighter. A tiny rosebud mouth pushed against her jaw and then Jamie was gone. His backpack bounced as he ran to his mother's side.

"I'll be back to check on you in a few days, try to get some rest, alright? You look terrible. And lay off the oxycodone, the last thing I need is to take care of your withdrawing bee-hind along with the Winter Soldier mess. They've got him on the Helicarrier! Of all places! Because that worked out _so well_ with the last psychopath they brought on board; I'm telling you, there's something in the water up there, like a-a stupid potion or something. Seriously. Okay, Munchkin, got everything? You sure? Crayons, book, paper, your left shoe, all of it? Alright, let's head out then. Bye, Natasha."

"Goodbye."

For lack of anything better to do once Sharon was gone, Natasha slept on and off until the late afternoon, then woke up to Clint shuffling around in the bedroom. "I got sunshine, on a cloudy day," he sang when she stirred and sat up. "When it's cold outside, I got the month of May... How you feeling, sugar?"

She rolled her eyes. "Like shit on a silver platter. How do you think?" It was an uphill battle, trying not to remember how much she liked his voice when he sang to her at the most inappropriate moments. During sex. Into her earpiece on a job when smiling was certainly unacceptable. During faked sex with marks. Filing paperwork. Training. Always he sang songs that he knew she hated, and she found herself not hating them anymore.

Clint sat with his side leaned against her back, pressing his face into her shoulder. "Talking 'bout my girl!" He rumbled. It tickled all the way down to her bones and she squirmed.

"Get off of me, Barton! God!" she laughed. She hit him with her cast.

"Very cute, Romanov. Scoot over."

Scooting over ended with Natasha lying on top of Clint's chest, arms around his middle and braced leg carefully snaked between his. He ran his hands smoothly up and down her sides. She loved him like the summer sky. "You are a strange man," she mumbled into his chest. He was warm and scratchy against her cheek.

"Is that what you know?"

"Well, you willingly choose to spend time with _me_, for one."

His laughter shook her slightly against his chest. It slowly faded as he lost himself to thought. "Tash, can I ask you something?"

"Hm?"

"The Winter Soldier. I thought he was before your time. Before all of us. I mean, that's some Capsicle-era shit, y'know?"

Her fingers curled against his sides, holding him tight and close. "I know," she agreed in a low voice.

Taking a deep breath, Clint was clearly steeling himself for either a great shock or embarrassment. "So...that means you must be older than you look. Or-or. You mentioned being in cryo?" he ventured.

Before it could go on longer, before it could get painful, she dug her forehead into his sternum and admitted, "I was born in 1928, Clint. Six years after the Captain. I don't remember my birthday, but I remember watching years of war drag by. Like a stranger. Like a graceless god of destruction. They did freeze me, a fair few times, but only as punishment. Waking me for a mission in a strange new world. They didn't seem to realize that being awake, watching everything grow old while I stayed the same, was the real torture. Don't tell the others."

Clint's fingers dug into her back like blunted knives. She braced herself, waiting for the curses, the utterations of terror or disgust, but they never came. Instead, after a moment, he resumed running his hands up and down and across her, firmer if not a little tighter. "I'm sorry, Natasha," he whispered. "I'm so sorry that happened to you."

"It's still happening," she said, her own voice faint in her ears. "I still have to watch you grow old. I'll outlive any child we might have. I'll outlive everyone."

The taste of roses choked her and he held her close.


	7. Chapter 7

Natasha's knee started to heal. Despite her deficiencies, she and Clint pushed on together. He insisted that it would be great for his reputation when he was in his nineties and she still looked twenty-five. Actually, his exact words were, "Imagine when I'm ancient and I've still got a young, hot wife..." He trailed off and blushed, mortified.

They met eyes and made a choice.

The choice was obvious, clean and pure and simple. Planning and execution were another thing entirely. Their names hadn't been released to the public after the fight in Manhattan, but their faces were still well-known, and any news about them would spread like wildfire. Witnesses were tedious but necessary, and so over the next weeks they decided who would be necessary to avoid conflict.

Stark, of course, would regrettably have to be involved. It was his tower and could be plied into silence with alcohol and a creative enough threat. Clint and Natasha roughed out a plan to sit menacingly around his lab in total silence and stillness every few nights for the time before their plan came to fruition, claim that no such thing had happened if he asked, finally alluding to it when they made him vow his silence. Sketchy, but workable.

Then with Stark came Pepper, naturally. Stark would need someone to tie his shoelaces for him, after all. And Pepper was the one who made sure they stayed happy and fed in the tower. Really, it was more her tower than anyone else's. Besides that, she had been a good friend to Natasha despite having previously asked her never to darken the doorstep again.

Sharon wasn't even a question. And Jamie would be invited come with her, of that Natasha was adamant.

The rest of the team seemed to be a reasonable enough decision, though they didn't know if there was a way to reach Thor. That probably wouldn't be too much of a problem, since he was one of the most unlikely people to be able to keep his mouth shut longer than five minutes at a time only because he was so damn happy for them.

"The way I see it, is that we're a team, right?" Clint said in bed a few weeks after coming up with the plan. "We work together, live together, eat together. We gotta trust one another with everything or risk being compromised, y'know? If we know each other's weaknesses, we can better cover one another's backs."

Natasha rolled over and stuck her cold feet between his thighs, grinning when he squirmed and yelled even though her mind was rolling over what he'd said. "You're right." Of course he was right. Clint never really said anything particularly pragmatic, unless he'd taken the time and thought it through. And nearly every night since Sharon and Jamie visited she had woken up screaming Rose. "They should be involved. And if they don't want to be, they can leave," she decided.

Still being cautious with her knee, Clint rolled so he was on top of her and started pulling off her pajamas. She laughed and let it happen.

The next morning Clint was the one to approach Tony with the second stage of the plan. They'd done well on spooking him at night and feigning oblivion during the day, so when Clint asked if he could throw a small party in his apartment - more comfortable than hers and with a 360 degree view of the city - Tony agreed almost immediately, casting them both wary looks.

After that it was only a matter of inviting the rest of the list, declining Pepper's offer to help plan, and buy everything they needed. It had to be done carefully so that it looked like Clint's party, since no one actually knew they were together. Coulson was the only living soul who had known. Even both of them sleeping in Natasha's apartment went unnoticed for the most part.

"Natasha, why is Clint inviting me to his party?" Sharon asked with narrowed eyes. It was time to remove her cast and her last check on Natasha's knee before she would be left to her own devices - and a detailed packet of physical therapy exercises - to get back on her feet. Jamie was off playing with Steve somewhere.

Natasha shrugged. "Because he knows you're one of the only people I enjoy talking to, probably," she replied. "And parties are ridiculous, but I promised I would indulge him for one night."

"That's...oddly considerate of you, Nat."

She rolled her eyes. "I _am_ capable of doing nice things, you know," she pointed out, and kicked Sharon to show how much the strength in her leg had improved.

Outside the apartment door, Sharon said, "He's been asking about you, you know. Barnes."

"Not interested."

"I know you aren't, I was just saying," she sighed. "Steve's been spending a lot of time up there, trying to get through to him. I don't know if it's helping but he's resilient, that one." Her expression grew pensive and distant as she thought over the captain. "He's a good man. A little naive, a little goofy, but he means well. And Jamie loves him. You know he came to my house for dinner a few weeks ago? Well, actually a few times. To see grandma again - it's weird to think they're actually the same age, isn't it? - and meet my mom and stuff, and yeah, Jamie's just crazy about him. Tells all the neighbor kids that he's friends with the real-life Captain America and, well, of course they don't believe him. So what does Steve do? He takes Jamie outside to play catch after dinner so everyone can see! Such a goof-ass, I tell you...what? Why are you looking at me like that? Shut up! I hate you!"

Sharon got Steve involved on Clint's behalf only four days before the party. He called to confirm his attendance. The reality of their decision occurred to them, but never for a moment did they panic. They had committed themselves to this, to being all the other had and all the other needed, a long time ago.

When the day finally arrived they dressed with care in their separate apartments. Natasha put a splash of cherry blossom perfume on her collar and wrists and pinned her hair behind her ears so it wouldn't hang in her face. She stared at herself in the mirror and waited. Waited for Clint's signal that everyone started arriving. Waited for her heart to settle back down from where it thudded in her throat. She wasn't afraid or nervous or having second thoughts, only waiting.

Fifteen minutes later Clint sent the signal. Natasha's knee was still tender enough to need the elevator and not to bother with heeled shoes, but she no longer needed the brace. She didn't bother with shoes at all, actually, just a pair of socks she stole from Clint ages ago. Casual and comfortable. As little makeup as possible, but enough not to raise questions. No jewelry for the time being. Her armor was immaculate.

The city below them was alight and the sky cloudless. Everyone but Steve and Sharon had arrived and were talking over drinks and music. Natasha met Clint's eye across the room and nodded a greeting. He grinned and raised a red solo cup - using actual crystalware would be a little suspicious - with a shout of, "You're late, Red Scare!"

"I arrived precisely as planned," she replied with a roll of her eyes. She approached him long enough to get a drink. Nothing with real alcohol, they both agreed to keep a clear head for the night.

Clint was wearing a faded army t-shirt and black jeans. His face was bright and clear with joy, though, so she couldn't even criticize him for the more casual choice. There was a brief moment in which she considered it, but he plucked teasingly at her cardigan and glanced down at her stockinged feet. She shot him a derisive look and they parted ways.

"Natasha, you look nice," Bruce said to her as Sharon and Steve were arriving. Sitwell, Nelson, and Torres - friends of Clint's - cheered them on from the bar. "I don't think I've ever seen you wear a dress off-mission."

She looked down at herself, at her purple cardigan, white sundress, and bare legs - one slightly thinner than the other after being off it for so long - before looking up. "Thanks, Doctor Banner," she replied, tightening the grip on her clutch purse. "It's easier to throw on a dress than shimmy into jeans with my leg."

And that, of course, got them into a discussion about how she was healing up and the exercises Sharon had her doing. Bruce was very politely and earnestly interested, his glasses glinting in the sparse overhead light as he leaned forward to be heard over a particularly loud strain of music. She found herself watching his hands as he spoke. He gestured a lot with whatever was at hand, whether it be his drink or his glasses or a baby carrot from the vegetable tray. The way he moved, large knuckles and rough dry skin weaving through the air between them to match the flow of his voice, made it very easy to imagine him as a professor.

At the allotted time she met Clint's eye. They nodded again and she slipped to the bathroom so he could make the announcement. "Hey! Guys! Okay, I promise, this is the only scheduled event for the evening and then you can drink and have fun all night, kay? But get your asses upstairs within five minutes, come on, chop-chop!" he called after turning off the music. Natasha listened with her ear pressed to the bathroom door as everyone went up the stairs (because Clint told them his private elevator was broken) with confusion in their voices. She smiled to herself.

As soon as the room was clear Natasha snuck out and hit the button for the elevator. Clint was grinning at her from the foot of the stairs, but he quickly darted up ahead of her to get everyone sitting. Because his apartment was at the top of the tower he had two smaller floors instead of one large one; the downstairs housed the kitchen/living room, bedroom, and bathroom, and the upstairs was usually a small training room but had been cleared out for the night.

In the elevator a bundle of purple hydrangeas, hibiscus, and carnations were waiting for her on the floor, tied together with a blue ribbon. She feverishly straightened her hair and fiddled with the arrangement of a few flower heads before pressing the button to go up.

Soft music was playing when the doors slid open, and their friends turned to face her in shocked silence. Either Clint had briefly explained or they had pieced together what was going on by then. "This is the part where you stand up," she intended to say, but when she opened her mouth only a soft laughing sound came out.

"No _fucking_ way!" Tony yelped. "I didn't even get to throw a bachelor party!"

Clint was beaming at her from the head of the room, eyes shining brightly, and she stepped toward him.

Agent Torres had four sisters and two brothers, all married, and for the last he became an ordained priest on the internet to perform the ceremony in a last-minute jam. He nudged Clint with his shoulder and grinned. It was very likely that they owed him about a million favors from there until the end of time. But that was alright.

The ceremony was short. Torres waxed poetic over how much trust it took for two spies to love one another, let alone keep the relationship a secret for five years before letting anyone else in. Five years of sharing secrets, of first fights, of frustrations and compromises without telling another soul in the world. Natasha and Clint listened quietly, with their heads sometimes bowed and sometimes looking directly into each other's eyes, knowing that any number of agents in SHIELD could be in the same boat as them.

"You're my best friend, Clint," she said, staring at her flowers - in Clint's favorite color - as she spoke. "You're the reason I'm alive today, and I-I-I love you. There are a lot of things I've done in my life that I regret, but this won't be one of them. This won't ever be one of them."

Smiling tremulously, Clint shrugged crookedly. "I love you, Tasha. That's really all I can say. I wanna spend the rest of my life with you and, uh...yeah. I love you a lot."

They probably should have written their vows ahead of time.

There were no mentions of God, no promises of a long and happy life together, just the truth laid bare. Natasha pulled the rings from the pocket of her cardigan, and they slid them onto one another's fingers. For the first time in front of anybody, they kissed. Their friends clapped and beamed and Natasha was a wife again. The scent of roses didn't choke her because all she could smell when she wrapped her arms around Clint were purple carnations.

After, Clint turned to the room of their seven wedding guests. "Okay, so, now you know." There was a smattering of laughter. "But this...it can't leave the tower, okay? We have tonight to drink and dance and party, but come sun-up outside of here, this never happened," he said, and there was a heavy somberness over the room as everyone murmured their agreement.

They had tonight. This was their one night to be any other couple in the world. To laugh. To kiss each other without checking over their shoulders first. To dance up close and wrap their arms around one another. So Natasha determined to make the most of it. She laced her hand through Clint's. She laughed. She kissed him whenever she wanted. She danced up close with her arms wrapped around him, his breath hot against her ear and his hands tight on her waist.

"Okay, I am trying really, really hard to be a cool friend and be happy for you, but what the hell, Natasha?! You didn't tell _me?!_ Me, of_ all people?! Come on!_" Sharon pushed between her and Clint to yell.

Natasha laughed. She laughed and she hugged her friend and Sharon was shocked into silence.

"As penance for deceiving me, you're going to have to play goofy wedding games. I refuse to leave you alone until you do," demanded Sharon when she regained her composure. "So, you need something o-okay, guys, we need something old for the happy couple!"

Tony's hand shot up into the air. "Steve's old!" he yelled.

"Hey!"

"I calls it like I sees it, Grandpa Steve."

Fighting a laugh, Sharon grabbed Steve by the collar and pulled him over. "Steve, give her a kiss. And now we need something new!" she yelled.

"Here! Here, I have something!" Pepper pulled an unopened packet of gum from her purse and waved it in the air, laughing. There were bright pink spots high on her cheeks.

Steve was dithering, so Natasha pulled him down for a peck of lips before snatching the gum pack from Pepper. "Thank you," she snapped with a grin.

Practically jumping with unrestrained excitement, Sharon ran both hands through her hair. "Okay, okay, so...something old, something new, someth- we need something-! Okay, I have, yeah, okay." She reached up and pulled the charm necklace from around her neck, kicking at Natasha's ankles until she turned around and fastening it on her. "Borrowed. Don't you dare lose this, Jamie picked it out for me and I will kick your cute ass all the way to Timbuktu. And now something blue. Anyone?"

Clint held up her bouquet, bound together with a blue ribbon. She tied it into her hair and everyone cheered.

After the party-turned-wedding-turned-wedding-reception, Natasha and Clint went into his bathroom and hung their rings beside one another on the wall. They couldn't wear them on jobs or even where the public could see, but as long as their rings were hanging in the bathroom next to their toothbrushes and towels then everything was fine.

They made love like a married couple, like they had all the time in the world, then lie beside one another for a long time before fucking like they usually did. They laughed into damp skin and murmured nonsense at each other.

"Did you see Pepper's face? I thought she was gonna lose her shit and drag Tony up to the altar instead."

She laughed until the bed shook. "I didn't see. I had tunnel vision," she mumbled with a shake of her head.

Clint's hand cupped her hair, his bristle chafing but comfortable. "Shit, we got _married_ today, Tash. I _love_ you."

"You're such an idiot."

They fell asleep pillowed against one another. For the first time in months Natasha didn't wake up screaming.

She did, however, wake up irritated. Her phone was buzzing on the nightstand. "_What?_" she rasped.

"Trust me, Nat, I wouldn't be calling if this weren't urgent," Sharon said. She sounded hungover. "It's about Barnes. He's awake."

"Fantastic, he didn't die in his sleep. Good for him. Can I go back to bed now?"

Sharon sighed tightly. "No, I mean the Winter Soldier is inactive. It's just _Barnes_. He's disoriented and distressed and he's asking for you," she said.

Propping herself up on one elbow, Natasha looked over her shoulder at Clint. He was sleeping like the dead, flat on his back and snoring. "You do realize I'm technically on my honeymoon, right? That's occurred to you."

"You didn't file vacation time with your handler."

"Clint did, and I'm still on medical leave for a week."

"Natasha, _please_," Sharon pleaded. "He hasn't even asked for _Steve_ yet."

Sighing to show her immense displeasure, Natasha chewed it over as she watched Clint's face. "Fine. Have someone pick me up in the usual place," she said and hung up before Sharon could argue. Natasha leaned down and kissed along the line of Clint's jaw until he woke up.

"Mmm, Tasha," he murmured, reaching for her, but she stalled his hand.

"I have to go for a while," she said softly, wrapping her arm briefly around him to bite his ear. "I'll be back in a few hours."

Clint grumbled wordlessly, already falling back asleep. She crawled out of bed and pulled on her clothes from the night before. If Barnes wanted to see her so badly he could see her as-is.

* * *

**So, anyone see that one episode of Parks and Rec? Well, I had already planned for Natasha and Clint to get married somehow or another in this fic, but then I saw that one episode of Parks and Rec and knew it had to be done this way. Seems oddly fitting for then to sneak it up on all their friends, after all.**


	8. Chapter 8

"Natalia, it's 2012," was the first thing Barnes said to Natasha when she stepped into the room. It was half cell and half infirmary.

She sank into the chair by his bedside. "I know, I've been awake since oh-four," she told him as she crossed her arms. "What was so urgent that you had to call me out of bed?"

Barnes reached his hand out toward her; she ignored it and raised one eyebrow. His eyes shuttered and darkened and he curled the hand - his bionic one had been removed for the time being - on his chest. "I don't remember anything," he softly said, "except you. I remember the cold, I remember falling, and then I remember you. Your hair and your lips, fighting beside you, putting us down in the cryo bay...I remember loving you, Natalia."

"Those were artificial memories. The Red Room carved them into us to make us complacent," she perfunctorily explained. "I was already in cryo when they found you, but I still know what they did. They did it to all of us. First they brainwashed you, then they built your arm and gave you a gun and a mission."

Blinking sluggishly, Barnes shook his head as he stared at the ceiling with red eyes. "I don't understand. Complacent. Was I fighting it? The brainwashing?" he croaked.

Natasha looked down at her tangled hands, feeling a million lies she could tell Barnes to pacify him dance on the tip of her tongue, and shook her head. There was nothing she could do to escape her own web of lies. Especially not with two of them from the Red Room in SHIELD's custody. The truth would come whether she liked it or not. "No. You were their perfect soldier. I was the one who needed to be beaten down into submission."

"Because of the baby?"

"Wh-?" Her breath tried to hitch but she stamped it down and smoothed it over. She didn't look up at his face. "James, there was no baby. We weren't really married."

The light over their heads flickered weakly, casting his features into stark white and gray contrast. Natasha remembered her weeks of mental detox after Clint brought her in, the cold sweats, the constant agony of not knowing her own mind, and didn't feel at all sorry for him. The pain was necessary to the process. "But...Natalia..." he weakly said. "I didn't mean our baby."

Sighing, she rubbed a hand over her brow. "What baby could you have possibly meant, then?" she asked.

"The one you choked with your cunt."

Time stopped. It took everything Natasha had in her not to reach out and throttle the Winter Soldier's grin off his face. As it were she seized him by the throat, pulled until a breeze blew between his back and the bed, and shoved him down, an arm across his collar.

"_Natasha!_" Sharon yelped from the other side of the allegedly soundproof wall.

When the doorknob rattled Natasha held up her free hand in a signal to wait. "He's faking it!" she snapped over her shoulder before rounding on the Soldier. "Listen to me, you pathetic sack of flesh and bolts, because I've had enough of your games already and I will only say it once. SHIELD is trying to help you. They can use your skills and keep you protected from other interested parties if you just cooperate," she growled.

Winter spat in her eye. "Why would I want to cooperate with the idiots who made you so soft, Natalia? They destroyed everything you were. Everything our fathers did for you, all they made you, gone for the love of some goofball with a bow and arrow."

"What did they ever do for me?" Natasha demanded, pressing down on his windpipe. "What did they do to me, Winter?!"

Hands pried them apart. Natasha almost lashed out against them before she recognized Sharon's thin silver watch and staggered away.

"In the hall, Agent Romanov. _Now_."

Sitting on the floor across from Winter's door, Natasha clutched her knees in white-knuckled claws and fumed silently as she waited for Sharon to put him back under. Two minutes later Carter emerged, flushed and agitated.

"What the hell was that, Natasha? Contrary to whatever your deluded mind has cooked up, _we don't want Barnes dead!_ And choking him isn't going to turn off the Winter Soldier!" she said calmly, though anger danced and flashed in her eyes with mingled concern. "Did anyone choke _you_ when _you_ were brought in? No matter how they might have wanted you dead?"

"Fury definitely _wanted_ to," retorted Natasha with a roll of her eyes.

Uncertainty and concern warred one another in the eyes of her friend before giving in, dropping to sit on the floor beside her. Their hands tangled together between them. When had Natasha become a woman of casual touches like this? Of close friends and sharing her more intimate secrets like children share candy and deceit?

"Natasha, I swear, I didn't breathe a word to anyone about the miscarriage, I don't know how he found out."

For a moment Natasha was confused, but then Winter's words about the baby she "choked with her cunt" came back to her. The blood drained from her face and her hand shook in Sharon's. "It doesn't matter," she said flatly. Clearly Sharon didn't buy that, chafing a thumb over her knuckles.

"It does matter, or you wouldn't have almost strangled him."

"Are you so sure? I'm a trained killer, after all."

Sharon snorted, "Oh, don't give me that; I know you better." She shook their hands before standing and offering Natasha help up. They stood together and headed off down the corridor. "You had multiple panic attacks immediately after, and woke up screaming every night for weeks after Jamie and I visited you the first time. Barton asked for advice about 'a friend of his' and I put it together myself. He's a sweetheart but about as transparent as wet tissue paper when he worries about you," she explained before Natasha could ask how she knew.

Looking down through stringy red strands of hair - she needed a shower - Natasha watched her feet walk for a while. Now was the perfect time for a normal person to confide in their longest friend, but Natasha just couldn't be certain if she would ever be normal. Still, she forced out, "It wasn't...just that," before her throat closed up with the accumulated guilt of so many long empty years living in stasis.

The side of her head burned and itched with Sharon's curious and concerned stare, but she shook her head. Not yet. Not ever. She would never be anything but raw when it came to the truth of it all.

"I thought the point of being on the team was being open with them about your weaknesses to prevent being compromised."

"Well, you aren't on the team," she said, and instantly regretted it.

Sharon looked untouched, but there was a tightness in the corners of her eyes that betrayed the hurt. "Does _the team_ know, then?" she asked. It was a credit to how well they knew each other that she didn't even need to hear Natasha's non-answer to understand. "Natasha, even if you won't open up to me, you need to talk to someone. This is affecting you on so many different levels that you _don't_ and _won't_ understand until the penny drops. Unless you want to have a nervous breakdown. Those are always fun."

"Shut _up_, Agent Carter," snapped Natasha, rounding on the taller woman. "You may know my blood type and the fact that I'm-" she mouthed the word _married_ despite the hall being empty; there were always hidden eyes and ears in SHIELD, "-but that doesn't mean that you know _anything_ about my mind. You can't even hold your own life together but you're trying to control mine!"

Footsteps stuttering to a halt, Sharon's sneakers squeaked on the tile and she stared down at Natasha with her mouth a thin hard line. "Well. Forgive me for inserting myself where I clearly don't belong," she quietly said and vanished down another hall.

Natasha found herself taking a half-step after her. "No, come on, Sharon-!" But she was alone. She dropped her head into one hand and sighed, frustration tangling in her throat, and set off for a ride ashore.

It was past noon when Natasha made it back to the tower, but she was still exhausted enough to go right back to sleep for the night. Inside the apartment door she pulled her dress off over her head, then perched on a stool at the kitchen table to watch Clint. "Welcome home, Missus Barton," he said with his back to her. "I'm makin' grilled cheese, want one?"

"Sure, Mister Romanov," she replied.

He turned to grin at her over his shoulder, then started singing as he cooked lunch.

For the next week, they spent their less-than-conventional honeymoon doing whatever they wanted. As long as they weren't seen in public together, anyway. They stayed in bed half the day, only getting up to eat and use the bathroom, showered together, and smiled too much. They called each other by their "married names" that only existed within the walls of their home. They moved Natasha's possessions from her apartment to his (theirs), and they snuck out one night to see the Russian ballet like teenagers going to a party.

Natasha practiced saying, "I love you," without her voice trembling in the bathroom mirror. Only when she knew that Clint was asleep.

There would be times when Natasha missed her solitary life, missed the quiet darkness of her apartment and separate bedroom, missed the knowledge that no one depended on her and she depended on no one, but none of those times dared encroach on that first week with her husband.

Bucky did, in fact, start to wake up for short periods of time, responding at last to the therapy Natalia had struggled and sworn through until she surfaced as Natasha. She didn't really feel one way or the other about the man behind the Winter Soldier, but Steve refused to leave the Helicarrier and his friend's side for longer than a few hours at a time. After another six weeks most of SHIELD's medical personnel were able to tell at that point when Bucky or Winter was out. Steve, on the other hand, remained stubbornly adamant that there was not a single bad bone in his boyhood companion's body.

"Dude, okay, that's a really nice thought, but have you considered that the not-bad bones in his arm were replaced by the great big, ridiculously shiny_ evil metal monstrosity_ he's been lugging around for the last sixty years?" Tony asked him with a quirk eyebrow and bad attitude.

From her place on the couch, with Clint slumped and sleeping like a log against her back, Natasha tipped her head. "Not to mention the brainwashing and consciousness-altering drugs. The Red Room could have taken the purest of boy scouts and made them into a mindless puppet," she told him, coloring in the blanks in her voice with hints of empathy. Those treatments had been exactly what took her from the Room in the first place, after all. And no matter what punishments they doled, no matter what nightmarish femme fatale personae they filled her with, she never seemed able to stop _wanting_.

Steve's hands fluttered helplessly as he tried and failed to make his point. "But - but - okay, but..." He looked at Natasha and tightly sighed. "Listen, I was going to find another way to do this, but when I was talking to Bucky yesterday we wound up talking about you, Natasha."

Her heart stuttered and jumped in her chest, but she betrayed no outward reaction. "Did he remember me away from the Soldier?" she asked lightly, tangling her hand in Clint's hair.

"He did, yeah," nodded Steve. "And-and he just felt awful about, well, everything. He wouldn't specify. I think he was ashamed of himself, and can you really blame the guy? But see, he was feeling pretty down on himself, so I told him that I'd help make it up to you if he wanted to give it a shot, and so he and I set something up for you that I think, if you go down to your old apartment, you'll be really surprised by."

The movement of her hand through Clint's hair stuttered and slowed and finally stopped as she watched Steve's face. He was smiling and so earnestly pink-cheeked that Natasha knew that there was something off about whatever Bucky had planned. Still, she carefully slid herself out from behind Clint, settling him against the back of the couch instead of her, and stood up.

"Show me," she said, voice steady as a rock.

Four floors down the elevator stopped to let Bruce in from his lab, wiping a foreign chemical from his hands and smiling a little sheepishly. "It's fine, nothing toxic," he assured them and prodded the floor for his apartment with one elbow rather than asking Steve to do it. "What are you two up to? Going to the gym?"

She shook her head. "I apparently have a _surprise_ waiting for me in my apartment," she said in a voice so light that the meaning hung thick and heavy over them like a fire blanket.

"Oh, that-that's...nice?"

Bruce hurried off when the cab stopped on his floor, wringing stinking hands at his front.

Arms crossed and feeling jittery, Natasha leaned against the back wall of the cab as it slid down to her floor. "Are you going to tell me what the surprise is?" she asked, staring determinedly at the smooth silver doors.

"I promised Bucky I wouldn't."

"Not even a hint?"

Silence fell over them and she gritted her teeth.

The cab bumped gently to a stop on her floor, and Steve stepped out first. Natasha followed at a snail's pace. Every footfall felt like sprinting a mile, the hall to her apartment door too long and narrow to breathe, and the smell of roses drifted through the years to haunt her yet again. Her hands wanted so badly to tremble but she wouldn't allow it, not with Steve watching, but she knew, she should have known, that there was something horribly wrong in the moments before she unlocked and opened her apartment door.

"Do you like it?"

Natasha's breath froze in her throat. The stench of a hundred roses rushed at her in a thick, tangible wall and her head swam with how quickly she forced the air from her lungs. One hand clamped over her mouth and nose, eyes watering, as she looked into her apartment. Steve grinned, thinking her emotional display was one of overwhelming joy.

"Bucky told me you had an attachment to...Natasha?"

The carpet was soft and familiar under her bare feet as she drifted inside, tentatively anchoring her to reality. She took in the scene, the gory stink of a hundred roses already in some state of decay or another all stuffed into her apartment, velvety and smooth, red and white, red and white, red and white like blood in snow, the stench of loss, the screaming emptiness between her legs, sweat and wood smoke, the ghost of her own voice sounding like an animal's keening howl in her ears.

A thorn pricked her finger, and a droplet of blood swelled over her skin. She clamped her hand over the nearest bunch and yanked it free, flinging the vile blossoms away. Steve cried out and everything slid into chaos.

When she returned to her senses she was drenched in dirty water. The carpet squelching beneath her knees. Her hands torn and bloody from a thousand thorns. Steve had called for help when she lost herself to the frenzy; Clint was flat on his back with a bloody mouth and bruises sprouting around both eyes. Every breath felt barbed and dragged down her raw throat. "Clint?" she whispered, voice painful.

He turned his head and opened one eye to scrutinize her. "I figured you'd cool down if I stopped moving," he deadpanned, "like a bear."

Her body shook. Adrenaline crash. "Clint, I'm...I'm sorry..." Her plea broke and fractured into a thousand meaningless platitudes. None of it mattered if she couldn't even offer the truth as a balm to soothe the hurt. Damp rose petals were plastered to her skin. She looked over her shoulder and found Steve, Bruce, and Tony standing in the door, poised to step in and intervene if she went insane and tried to kill her husband.

"Natasha," Bruce said, his voice steady and calm. "Natasha, will you let me look at your hands?"

The world was sluggish and unfocused but Natasha bullied herself to her feet. Her hands hovered out before her, dripping red onto the white carpet, and she nearly lost herself in the waking nightmares again. "I didn't mean to," she whispered. "I didn't mean to, I swear, it was an accident..." Bruce's broad, dry hands closed softly closed over her shoulders and guided her to the elevator. Her vision narrowed and darkened around the edges; she wouldn't have made it without Bruce guiding her every step of the way.

In the amount of time it usually took to blink, Bruce was coaxing her down into a chair. "Sit down, Natasha. This is going to sting a little," he told her, and started disinfecting the weeping cuts on her hands. The pain sent her drifting back down into reality.

"I beat my husband," she numbly said. "I had a nervous breakdown and attacked Clint. Sharon was right. The other shoe dropped."

When her hands started to shake Bruce had to close both of his over them. The salt on his skin stung. "Natasha, look at me. Natasha," he told her, repeating himself until she finally dragged her eyes from their hands to his face. "Clearly there is something you haven't told us, but I don't care about that right now. Natasha, whether you like it or not, we're friends. And I hope you know that you can talk to me. What happened today, it's a serious sign of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, maybe even Dissociative Personality Disorder, and you can't fix it by ignoring it or pretending the problem doesn't exist. You've been through a trauma and it's split you in two. I think I know enough about being divided that I could help, if you let me. If you let all of us."

"I know that," she said, replying on autopilot in a small hummingbird voice. "I know I do, but..." Her hands trembled right out of Bruce's and the smell of roses encroached. The back of her throat tasted like bile; she'd thrown up and she focused on that taste as an anchor. "It was lifetimes ago but I just can't think about it. I was fine, I was completely fine for so long, but then I lost the baby last February, and-"

Bruce's face fell into planes and lines of sympathy. "You lost a baby?" he asked, his voice soft as rose petals.

It was the first time outside of Clint and Coulson that she'd called her miscarriage the loss of a baby. Even if she'd bitterly called the child a metaphor. For so many years she'd shoved down everything that made her weak, pushed it off in the the hopes that it would all go away, but of course Bruce was right. And telling him almost made the crushing weight sitting over her chest feel a little lighter. Like he was carrying a portion of it for her.

Natasha nodded. "I miscarried at nine weeks. I didn't know I was pregnant until I woke up and it had happened," she said, and the weight lessened further.

"I'm so sorry, Natasha. That must have been a big shock."

"I was terrified!" she blurted out. "I-I mean, I wasn't alone. Clint was there but we were both so afraid. Of-of what it would do to us, what it meant for our future. We weren't exactly in a solid relationship like we are now, and..."

And she talked. She recounted that dark Bosnian night, the crime scene in her hotel sheets, and Bruce _listened_. He didn't tune out and nod when she paused for breath; he listened to her. His eyes were vast and dark with sadness for her, one corner of his mouth more creased and puckered than the other. Natasha had never noticed that about him before.

When her words ran dry he moved as if to hug her, but seemed to think better of it. Finally she could take a breath without feeling like she was going to shake out of her skin. The smell of roses was gone and her mind was clear. Her fingers itched with bandages. Before Bruce could speak she leaned forward and wrapped an arm around his ribs, head on his shoulder, and he held her for a short eternity until she felt sturdy enough to let go.

"There's something I need to do," she told Bruce. "Tell Clint I...I'll be back."

"Natasha?"

She escaped to the elevator without another word.

Sharon was checking in on Barnes when Natasha got there. It had been weeks since she'd been back to the Helicarrier and a part of her hoped that perhaps Sharon had forgotten the cold things she'd said to her. "The Winter Soldier isn't out right now," Sharon said, arms crossed and steel flashing in her eyes.

"I don't need the Winter Soldier. I need his memories."

They stared one another down. Sharon must have seen the war in her eyes, because after a few moments she sighed. "Be quick. Someone will be along with his dinner soon and Steve's technically the only person allowed to see him."

Shouldering past her, Natasha replied, "It should only take a minute."

"I'll be watching for signs of violence."

She shot Sharon a look before shutting the door. Barnes was watching her from the chair beside his bed, well enough now to sit up. He offered up a weak smile when she sat on the edge of the bed. "Hey there, dollface," he murmured. "What can I do ya for?"

There was no easy way to say it, and so she just did. "I want you to tell me everything you know about me. Every treatment, every drug, every plan they had for me," she told him. "Specifically, I want to know what they did to me after Slovakia."

And he told her.


	9. Chapter 9

Natasha's first task before leaving the Helicarrier was to visit Fury's office. She knew exactly what she needed from him, exactly what she wanted to say, but as soon as she was seated across the Director's desk the words dried up and curdled in her throat. In the end she had to close her eyes and force it out.

Fury's chair creaked as he shifted. "Let me get this straight, Agent Romanov. You want SHIELD, a government agency that is supposed protect people like Captain Rogers and yourself, to cure the super serum," he slowly said.

"Yes, sir."

"No."

She sucked in a breath and pushed herself against the back of her chair. "Sir, you know I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it were possible," she slowly said. "It's 2012. We have technology ten times as advanced as when the original serum was synthesized, and-"

_Bang!_ Fury slammed his fist onto the desk and Natasha inwardly recoiled. Outwardly she merely blinked, but Fury knew her better than that. "Agent Romanov, I understand why this is important to you, but I'm turning you down. Can you imagine what would happen if it was unearthed that SHIELD had synthesized a cure for Captain Rogers' condition? Especially with the shitstorm going down in Congress with the Mutant Registration Act. It just can't happen in the US government." He leaned forward onto his elbows. "Not to mention, _we_ just don't have the _money_ for that kind of project. I'm very sorry, Agent." His eye and voice were heavy and dark with meaning.

_Stark._

Darkness had fallen and yet the tower was still awake when Natasha returned. She went straight up to the communal floor, her mission clear and strong in mind as the elevator rocketed skyward. It didn't occur that the scene would be uncomfortable after her earlier episode, but as soon as she stepped in and everyone turned to stare her heart jumped up between her eyes. Her head began to throb. "I need to talk to you," she told Tony without sparing a glance for Bruce, Pepper, or Clint.

Tony cocked a gun made with his fingers. "Shoot it to it, Tash."

Ignoring her husband's puzzled look, she melted forward and sank onto a stool at the bar, as close as she'd dare get to Tony without bringing up memories of Natalie melding and manipulating him into what she wanted. "I need money," she evenly said. It would come out anyway, so trying to speak with Tony in private would just be useless.

Clint shot up from the sofa. "Whoa, Nat, what?" he asked.

"Maybe you should ask your old man if you wanna buy yourself something pretty, Pippi."

"It's funding for a research project," Natasha plowed forward unfazed. Tony's eyebrows shot up as he waited. The entire room felt like it was holding its breath together, the collective air thinning and stretching and Natasha spoke up before it could reach its breaking point. "It would be-"

"Hello? Anyone ho-oh, hey everyone," Steve called, pausing in the door when he felt the tense atmosphere.

Words upon words stacked up and clogged her throat. The idea of suggesting her idea to Tony in front of Steve was suddenly the very last thing she wanted. But it had to be said and dropping the subject would only make things worse. She took a deep breath, biting her lip. "I want to fund research to reverse the super serum."

"_What?!_"

Natasha averted her eyes to the glass bar top. "You all heard me. I want to find a cure for-"

"Just hold on one hot minute, KGB Barbie," Tony snapped and gestured with his glass of Scotch, "You want me to revert America's Sweetheart back into Chicken Legs McGee?"

"Hey!"

"I've seen the pictures, Cap!"

"I'm not asking you to do this because I want Steve forced back to the way he was," she ground out, bracing herself on her elbows.

Head tipped, lips pursed, and eyebrows furrowed, Tony targeted her with his original bitch face. "Yeah, well, Bruce Wayne didn't build that bullshit nuclear reactor with the intention of Bane turning it into an Atom bomb either, did he? The cost astronomically outweighs the benefits, so, _no_. Drink?" He offered an empty glass.

"You don't even know why I-"

"I _don't need_ to know," Tony shot back, his voice loud and ringing in the group's heavy silence. He'd at some point down the line picked up that tic from Bruce where he gestured with everything at hand. Currently it was an olive pierced by a toothpick. "One of the fundamental rules of inventing shit like this is that if a tool exists, it can be made into a weapon. Steve-o, how would you sleep at night, knowing there was a possibility for some nutjob to turn you back into your old asthmatic self?"

Steve shifted, still only half a step inside, and wrung his hands. "To be fair, I don't sleep much as it is so-" he began.

"See?! No dice, Ruski. Now let it go and sit down, we're watching a movie."

And Tony let it go as easily as that. Clint, who knew exactly why she would want the serum reversed, patted the stretch of cushion next to him, battered eyes sad. But the others watched her with wary suspicion. It was only natural to be concerned by her sudden interest, but the idea that they really thought she would risk Steve's safety for no good reason or even to betray them sat in the bottom of her stomach and burned.

When she finally bullied herself to move and sat Clint whispered, "I'm sorry, Tasha. Maybe we can get him alone another time," into her ear, his words lost to the others' discussion over what movie to watch.

Natasha gripped his hand unseen between them, looking into his bruised eyes and swollen nose. "I'm sorry I hit you," she murmured back.

"I know you are. You would have stayed and rubbed it in if you weren't."

She ducked her head, unamused even by their usual banter.

The room's charge was broken by Tony loudly clapping his hands. "Okay, whatever, fine, Steve wins a Disney flick yet again, _Up_ it is. Everyone sit down and shut up."

As soon as the animated news reels started Natasha understood Steve's draw to the movie. He must have seen a clip online. He insisted it was only because he was interested in art and "_Not_ because I like little kids' movies, Tony!"

"Aw, look, it's like Bruce as a tiny chub!" Pepper exclaimed when the main character was in the daylight. Clint laughed and squeezed her hand as the little animated boy ran down the street and knocked himself out on a tree stump. Natasha's mind was still occupied with other things, but she tried to push it back and enjoy the show. Movie night was their team tradition to help Steve get caught up on modern popular culture, but mostly they just ended up watching animated features.

When the girl character appeared with her vivid red hair and brash personality, Natasha assumed people would compare her to Pepper. But as soon as she said, "You know, kid, you don't talk much...I like you!" there was an enormous cry of, "_Natasha!_" and everyone laughed. Finally she relaxed and allowed herself to enjoy the movie with the knowledge that apparently her indiscretion had been momentarily forgotten.

Natasha managed to keep every breath steady and even throughout the movie. Even when Ellie and Carl found out they couldn't have children and Ellie shut down. Even when, time and again, they were forced to put their dreams on hold. Even when Ellie died and Carl was left on his own. Throughout Carl's entire journey through South America with Russell she was able to distance herself emotionally and lose herself in Clint's warmth against her side.

Carl turned page after page of his deceased wife's Adventure Book, every picture of them growing a little older together. And on the last page it said _Thanks for the Adventure- now go have a new one! Love, Ellie_, and half the room was in quiet tears.

"That's it," Natasha blurted out, her voice faint and distant over the hornets' nest screaming between her ears. "_That's_ why I want the super serum reversed. JARVIS, pause and lights."

Everyone hastily wiped at their eyes when the lights went back up, then turned to look accusingly at her. "The movie's almost over!" whined Tony with his face shoved into the back of the couch so no one could see him crying like a child. "What could possibly be more important than letting us all silently cry this stupid movie out in peace?!"

"The commanders of the Red Room injected me with their own version of the super serum in 1951, when I was twenty-two years old," she said, holding Clint's hand in an iron grip and refusing to look up from her knees. "When Steve was given the serum in '42, he had the choice. He volunteered. I was_ restrained_ and given two options: either take the serum or watch the man who raised me die. And they gagged me, so even if I wanted to I couldn't refuse.

"I can't have children because of what the serum did to me. It's not like the Red Room needed their spies laid up. My biological clock runs at a fraction of the rate of a normal human's; I'm nearly a hundred years old but I've physically aged no more than a few years. I can't have what you all have. All because of a choice I never got to make. Steve knew what he was getting into when he took the serum. He _knew_ he would watch everyone he knew grow old and die while he stayed the same, he _knew_ that the world would change around him and he agreed, but _I didn't_. I didn't get that choice. I got a threat, and brainwashing, and the death of someone I loved very dearly."

She was angry. She was so viciously, unbelievably angry at the injustice of it all that she was blinded by the rage and the tears in her eyes. Clint tried to wrap an arm around her shoulders but she shook him off, feeling dirty and exposed and so, so raw. "JARVIS, just...play the rest of the movie."

Pepper was still crying into her hand and trying very hard to glare at Natasha. Steve looked about ready to jump out the window. The movie ended but none of them were really watching, even if their eyes were aimed at the screen. After the credits rolled and the lights went back up, the air in the room thick and stinking of roses - at least to Natasha - no one moved.

Then Tony cleared his throat heavily and said, "Okay, I will _think about it_ and that's all you can ask of me."

Hands curled in her lap, Natasha nodded without a word. Her heart was beating so quickly she couldn't find it in herself to speak. A part of her was still massively angry, pulse racing and weak like a hummingbird thrum, and Clint dared not touch her. Not after the mess she'd made earlier. She stood up before she trembled apart into molecules and brushed a hand over Clint's shoulder. "I'll be..." she trailed off and drifted to the elevator, lost in thought and sick of being herself. The perfect cure would be a mission, a long undercover job where she could pretend to be someone else and forget the shitstorm of her life.

The air on the tower roof was cold and clear but Natasha felt too warm and stifled. She pulled the sweatshirt off over her head and pushed her hair behind her ears before sinking down to sit. Chill air rose goosebumps on her bare back and stomach. Her hair was getting longer, nearly reaching past her shoulders now, but she didn't allow herself to feel the same revulsion as she had on the Helicarrier nine months ago. If the best way to get over a fear of flight was to take a plane trip around the world, and the best way to get over a fear of water was to dive headfirst into the deep end, then the best way to resolve her feelings for the image of blood on snow was to let her red, red hair fall over her pale shoulders.

City sounds echoed up through the nighttime air and tangled between her fingers, ozone glittering above her like stardust. The open deck where Thor came and went from Asgard was vast and empty and the wind whistled through it. Her whole life was vast and empty, one mission, one identity, one life after another, a long series of failures and mistakes and _wanting_ more than she could ever have. The wind whistled through the spaces in her ribcage.

The stairwell door opened behind her with a creak of rusty hinges. "Agent Romanov."

"Agent Carter," she replied stiffly, picking at a loose thread on the hem of her bra. "Who's watching Jamie?"

Blonde hair entered her line of sight as Sharon sat, their shoulders brushing together. "He's with my grandma. I wanted to come and talk to you before it got too late...in the morning," Sharon reached a little wryly. "Plus I've heard good things about the view up here. It's pretty nice, I guess."

"I've seen better in Stalingrad," Natasha shrugged. She didn't tear her eyes away from the skyline, raking her gaze over every pinprick of light and every dark angular silhouette against the purple pre-sunrise sky.

Straightening the coat over her shoulders, Sharon sniffled in the cold hair and watched their breath rise in crystalline clouds of vapor. "I was talking with Bucky earlier tonight. He told me that you had some unfinished business in the outskirts of Kremnička. Hydra and Red Room business or something. I've spoken with Director Fury and he's cleared it as long as you take the team. The coordinates are already in your phone."

Kremnička. Natasha knew the name of that village better than she knew the back of her own hand. Staring down at her pale fingers, she shivered in the cold of bloody memories.

"Natasha? You understand that you need to do this."

"I understand," she nodded without tearing her eyes from her hands. "I do. We'll go as soon as everyone's able."

Sharon's hair brushed her cheek as an arm snaked over her shoulders. "You're sorry you were a bitch to me earlier," she fondly said.

She laughed, startled. "You know? I am," Natasha agreed, leaning into her friend's side as the sun started to rise.

* * *

**We're almost at the truth! Thanks very much for your reviews, everyone; they mean very much to me.**


	10. Chapter 10

It was two days before Christmas Eve when Natasha mustered up the courage to approach the team with her mission. With _their_ mission. "There's some business I need to attend to, but I need you all with me to go through with it," she said over breakfast early that morning, staring down at her knees and the soft navy carpet. Her hands tied themselves around one another but didn't shake. Natasha hadn't seen Sharon in the three weeks since their talk on the roof. She hadn't seen much of anyone, keeping mostly to herself and her thoughts in one of the guest apartments because her old one stank of roses. Her body was peaceful and still even if her mind seethed and foamed with anxiety.

Pushing a glass of orange juice across the table to her, Tony leaned forward onto his elbows and looked directly in her eyes. He did that to her sometimes, like she were a mathematical equation he couldn't quite puzzle out. "Let's do it, I'm in," he said, and her insides itched.

"You know I am too, Tash," Clint said from the couch. She twitched a smile at him as Bruce and Steve murmured their agreement. "The Quinjet ready?"

She nodded. "We can leave after breakfast. It should only be a day and we won't need any battle gear. It's...a peacemaking, I guess," she said to her juice. "No armor, no weapons, we just get in, make contact, and leave. Shouldn't take more than 24 hours." Hair fell in her eyes and obscured her vision with red.

After they finished eating they went their separate ways to pack any overnight essentials. Natasha had had a bag prepared for a week; it took two attempts to actually go through with her determination to ask. Half an hour later they met in the garage to drive to the Quinjet a few miles away. The afternoon was dawning bright and cold and they were all bundled against the wind. Clint and Bruce started throwing armfuls of snow from the tops of cars at one another, laughing like children. It was the most snow seen in Manhattan for a very long time.

"Let's play a game, I'm bored already," Tony announced in the threshold of the Quinjet. "We should drink!"

Crashing into the nearest seat and strapping in, Natasha shot him a glare. "I'm not drinking." No matter how much she might have wanted to.

"Yeah, Tony, should you really be drinking on a mission?" asked Bruce despairingly, and Tony unhappily buckled himself in. Not allowing her face to betray a thing, Natasha leaned against Clint's side and solidly slept for the first time in weeks. The team's voices rose and fell softly around her, wrapping her in sound like a bullet-proof security blanket all her own.

It was the next morning in Slovakia when the Quinjet landed and everyone was a little disoriented, wrapping their heads around the "time travel" phenomenon of jet lag. Gnawing on her lower lip, Natasha guided them all through the little village to their destination. Probably they could have put it off for a few hours, but her head was a mess and a part of her thought this was something that could be gotten over with quickly.

Snow lie thick and slippery on the cobbled streets. Several times Natasha slipped and started to fall but her steady breakneck progress wasn't hindered. Her eyes were fixed on the wooded outskirts of the village, and the villagers' eyes were all fixed on them. It wasn't every day the Avengers' Quinjet landed in your back yard.

"Natasha, do you know where we're going?"

When she nodded and spoke her voice was weak. "Yes. Yes, I know," she replied.

Ghosts of monsters and men chased their way around her ankles in the drifts of snow and stuttering breeze. The scream of a man long dead, a man once loved and held just as dearly as Clint, cleaved her chest apart from the inside out. The cottage at the end of the lane was bigger than her memory served, two rooms had been added since she came across it, but it was otherwise untouched. She looked up at the blue, blue sky and was glad for the vivid brightness. The sun had been blacked out by ruddy smoke and the blood of fallen soldiers last time.

Instead of walking to the house Natasha took a vague left toward the outstretching woods. The footsteps of her friends and teammates fell in time with the thundering pounding of her heart in her ears. Light seemed to separate from the air, pulled together like golden strands, swirled in her vision and shimmered, and for a moment she thought with horror that she was going to faint. But then brambles and broken-off twigs scraped through her coat against her arms as she pushed through the thin outside barrier of the wood, pinning her back down to reality.

"Oh! Cripes, guys, be careful, these are sharp!" Bruce's voice broke through the ten-ton silence. "Natasha, I'm pretty sure you cut yourself. Are you okay?"

Minute trickles of blood dripped down her forearms into the thin covering of snow on the forest floor. "I'm fine," she called back, voice strong and clear despite how lightheaded she felt. "Almost..."

Her feet stopped and Tony walked right into her back. "What? What the hell?" he asked.

Withered and frozen rose bushes tangled together at her feet, blocking the way. Even in still frigid air the smell of cold sweetened decay came to her senses. Her episode weeks before was still fresh in their minds. Clint's hand touched her waist and he pulled out a pocket knife. "Tasha, do you want me to...?" he offered.

"No," she insisted, holding out a hand to stop him. The ferocity of its meaning stretched out before her as she took in the empty brambles. "No, don't touch them. Don't you dare." Natasha took a breath deep enough to make her chest hurt, then started to push through the thorny tangle despite how it scraped against her legs.

"Natasha! You're going to get tetanus and I will not feel bad for you!"

"Why are we even meeting the contact in the middle of the woods?"

No one followed her, probably convinced that she was going insane, but she didn't stop, couldn't stop, not when she was so close. Not when everything she'd spent the past sixty years running from was laid bare right in front of her. Then there was a heavily accented shout of, "Hey! Stupid Americans!" behind them and Natasha stopped with a hand supporting her against the nearest tree.

A plump dark-haired woman of around Pepper's age was holding an axe at the same entrance of the wood, glaring them down. "Stupid Americans! This land is private!"

Steve looked at Natasha. "Someone lives in that house. Is she our contact?" he asked. He offered a hand to help her back through. The thorns stung more the second time than the first and her heart pounded with the disappointment of coming so close and being stopped. She shook her head at Steve. This woman was definitely not their contact.

"You speak English?" Natasha called to the woman.

She nodded. "I speak enough. What you are doingk here?"

Tony opened his mouth but Natasha grabbed his arm. "No, I'll do the talking," she warned him, and continued toward the woman to speak. "We are not trespassing. A, uh...there was a midwife who used to live in this house, in the 1940s?"

"Áno. My babička. My grandmater," the woman replied. She and Natasha were about the same height when standing a foot apart. They closely inspected one another, dark springy curls against vivd red waves, olive complexion against snowy paleness, brown eyes against green. "I am called Alena."

Alena moved the axe from one hand to the other so they could shake. "I'm Natasha. We have come here because..." She glanced over her shoulder at the team, gnawing on her lip and knowing that nothing would be the same. "Because in February of 1945, your grandmother helped a Russian woman, one of the invading soldiers. She never had the chance to return and thank her, so I came in her place to thank you in your grandmother's place."

"Babka still lives. She is very old, and resting now, but inside."

There was a still, soft moment while the words sank in. Then snow crunched and sang like sparks beneath her feet as she ran to the cottage like a woman possessed. Inside it was musty and dark, sunlight shining through the windows in dusty shafts over the bed where an old woman lay. Alena looked hauntingly like her grandmother as a young woman. Her breathing was heavy and loud, but when she looked at Natasha her cloudy eyes were alert.

«Angel of death,» she croaked in Slovak.

Natasha sank into the chair beside the old midwife and shook her head. «No,» she replied, taking the leathery soft hand in her own. «But I _am_ a ghost.» Tears and time fogged her vision. «I'm sorry I didn't come back. I always intended to, but the longer I stayed away the more afraid I became to face you.»

Zora, Natasha remembered. The midwife's name was Zora, and she shook her head at Natasha 67 years after the fact. «I never needed you to return, my poor sweet girl,» she softly said. «What you lost haunted me, too. It wasn't my first birth, but it was the first time I had ever seen a loss like yours. I hoped you would return. I so hoped.»

«You planted roses.»

«My husband did,» nodded Zora, her wizened old face shakily attempting to smile. «When the war ended he threw a sachet of seeds and never looked back. 'Let them go untamed like that sad wild girl,' he said. I think he fell in love with your sadness, the poor old poet.»

Natasha smiled and pushed a steely curl from Zora's brow. «He was a good man. I remember the photographs he used to take, and his kindness. If given the chance he could make anything sound beautiful,» she said. She could hear voices outside growing closer, Bruce butchering Slovak in an attempt at good manners and Alena laughing at him.

With a tiny gasp, Zora's hand spasmed in Natasha's. «We made a box for you We buried it with the roses when the Curtain fell. Such a sad time. My poor old Harald, he sealed it tight. You can still find it. Take it with you when you go back to Heaven.»

She pressed a firm kiss to Zora's hand. «Thank you. I'll find it. Zora, thank you. Thank you for saving me, even when I didn't want to be saved. _Thank you_,» she said, the words hot and fierce in her throat after so many years locked tightly away.

Another tremulous smile. «Did you find happiness in the end, Natalia?» asked Zora.

She thought of Clint, of her soft white sundress and wedding party of seven on top of the world, of the team, her friends, of Sharon screaming at her for getting hurt, of Jamie's hand tiny and warm in her own, and Natasha squeezed Zora's swollen knuckles. «I did.» She stood, pressed a kiss to Zora's brow, smoothed back her hair once more, and left the bedroom. Everyone was already waiting for her.

"Zora told me there was a box, buried with the...with the roses, intended for Natalia," she told Alena.

Smiling and shaking her head, Alena gestured for the team to sit. "It has been buried until I am ten. There is flooding in the summer, so Grandpa Harald digs it up. I find. You wait," she said and stepped out, wiping sap-sticky hands on a checkered rag.

Natasha sat beside Clint on the couch and folded her hands. Tony, Steve, and Bruce took the two other armchairs (Bruce on the arm of Tony's) and were watching her closely. Blood was drying on her arms and legs. The cuts itched and stung but she didn't scratch them, only met the eyes of each teammate. "It shouldn't be long," she evenly said and bowed her head to wait.

"We aren't here for a mission, are we, Natasha?" Steve asked.

After a long moment she shook her head. "We're here because we're a team. That means...that means knowing everything that can compromise us, no matter how far in the past it might be. And I'm sorry it's taken me so long to tell you," she softly said.

The glockenspiel in the hall loudly ticked. Chimed in the hour. Then Alena finally returned from the cellar with a small pine box in her hands. It was the size of a shoe box but only half as deep, and she passed it to Natasha with a hammer before sitting, waiting, probably just as curious to know what was inside as Natasha and the team were. She'd known of its existence since she was ten, after all.

In steady hands Natasha used the hammer to pry the nails from the old wood, stained with soil and damp and time. Feeling her stillness for truth, Clint put an arm around her shoulders as the lid pulled away with a protesting creak. It had indeed been sealed tight with nails and wood glue. The box's contents had been unhurt by the years, and one by one she pulled them out into the dusty cottage air.

A glass vial, corked and sealed with wax, containing a wisp of russet hair as faint and thin as an afterthought. The glass was clouded on the outside but it still caught light from the window with a jumping shimmer. After inspecting it closely, turning it between her hands, feelings its weight, she passed it to Clint. A note card of thick parchment, creamy yellow with time and quiet despair, a faded little footprint shorter than her pinky finger blooming in ink in the center. Natasha brushed her fingertips around the edges of the toes, the heel and the tiny arch, then passed it along as well. The dust of a rose long since dried and decayed clung beneath her fingernails.

A yellowing black-and-white photograph of Natalia from above her head, only sixteen years old, a long braid trailing over her shoulder and a silent still baby, loosely wrapped and cradled in the crook of her elbow. If she looked closely enough she could see the bruises around the baby's eyes, the darkened fingertips, the mottled lips and ears, so Natasha didn't look closely.

"She was your grandmother?" Alena asked, peering over Natasha's shoulder. "You look of her."

Natasha handed Clint the photograph, bowed her head, and silently started to weep into her hands. At Bruce's murmured request, the vial of hair impossibly tiny in his large palm, Alena left them alone. The air in Natasha's lungs condensed and grew and she howled like a wild wounded creature until the windows rattled. Arms slung around her, Clint's, Steve's, Tony's, Bruce's, they all crowded around the couch and held her just as they would have (and had) held one another in times of trouble. It took five minutes of hysteria, of old horror in a dark Bosnian hotel, of blood and unbearable misery on a Slovakian battlefield, of nearly seventy years swallowing the memories that made her human, before she could breathe and find her voice.

"I." A soft sound of frustration and kneading at the tears still streaming from her eyes. "I was in love with a boy outside the Room. He was a pilot and-and we eloped and he died in an air raid after I became pregnant. It was early in 1945 when... The Red Room..._they made me fight_, in the hopes that I would lose the baby, but I just..._kept fighting_, right up until my water broke. Harald was the one who found me and brought me to Zora, the midwife.

"My baby was stillborn. And her name was Rose. Would have been. Harald buried her in the woods. I tried to leave the Red Room after that, I couldn't take the grief and keep it locked up so I ran from this house and defected. For a long time I was a free agent because there was nothing else for me to do. They found me six years later, after a bombing in Moscow. _Winter_ found me. Ivan, the man who raised me, he was dying, but Bucky offered us the serum. I accepted to save Ivan's life and became their-their tool. I never came back to this place until now. I couldn't face it, knowing that my daughter died for nothing."

She look at them all then, and didn't hide her eyes. Didn't hide the ghosts clawing their way free from the hollows in her cheeks or the rose dust beneath her fingernails. She wanted - needed - them to see, because they were her team and her family and she needed them like air in the middle of the ocean. She wasn't asking for them to cry for her or to try to save her tortured soul. She was waiting.

Tony, of all of them, was the one to break the heavy silence. With his cell phone. "Yeah, hey Fury. I'm buying out half your R&D department to work with mine on a personal project. Well, you'll get 'em back when the job's done, so gimme the best you got. _Why?_" He met Natasha's eyes with his own, his gaze fierce and vast and darkly proud as he appraised the spy who betrayed his trust so long ago. "I'm going to find a cure for the Russian super serum. Yeah, it's kind of an outdated concept, but it's worth it."

He hung up and scowled at her like he did when he wanted a drink. "Merry _fucking_ Christmas."

* * *

Two years. Two years of waiting, of tensing every time the phone rang, innumerable requests for more blood, from her, from Steve, from Bucky and Bruce, to cross-reference them, of watching Jamie grow like a weed, of watching Steve and Sharon fall in love, of watching Pepper become pregnant and give birth to a healthy baby girl, of sleepless nights, two years of disappointment and wondering if all the money was even worth it, when finally a boy named Peter, a boy who had taken her photograph the night after the Chitauri attack, started working for SI as an intern and stumbled upon the project. He supplied the team with his father's flawed Decay Rate Algorithm to alter as they saw fit, and only weeks later Natasha's phone started to buzz with the news she'd so long been waiting for.

The night before the procedure, she and Clint sat on the roof in total silence, watching one another in the dark of the city night. Worry and love chased each other across his face, but every time it looked ready to overwhelm him Natasha leaned across the space to kiss him. She wasn't afraid at all, no matter the outcome. Not anymore. She had made her peace.

* * *

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Bruce asked, eyes crinkling reassuringly over the top of his surgical mask. "There's no going back when you get your first gray hair."

She met Clint's eye in the safety of the observation deck, and nodded once. Despite her serenity she didn't trust her voice to be steady.

The doors of the transmutation chamber closed around her and she felt the injections pierce her flesh. The device whirred to life and the lights were blinding. There was pain, an incredible amount of pain to the point where she could have screamed. But she didn't. Couldn't for the seizure of her muscles and the clench of her jaw. She didn't scream. Not even when sparks flew from the device. Not even when alarms blared. Not even when the technical team ran circles around one another to stop the chaos.

Instead, she raised her head and imagined she could see the sky over Stalingrad. Raised her head and laughed in her mind as the chamber burst into flames, because in that moment she was _Natasha_. She was resilient Natasha, and she was yearning Natalia, and soft-spoken Natalie, pig-headed Nadia, and flirtatious Nadine; she was every life she'd ever lived and every life she'd ever lost; she was Sharon Carter's friend, she was Bruce Banner's teammate, she was Tony Stark's roommate, she was Clint's wife, she was the mother of Rose.

Natasha looked skyward and laughed with her lion heart beating strong, because in that whispered moment she was _human_.

The End


	11. Epilogue

Clint leaped to his feet as the chamber burst into a ball of flames. "_Natasha! Natasha! WHAT ARE YOU IDIOTS DOING, GET HER OUT OF THERE!_" he screamed from the observation deck.

"We can't stop it now or it could kill her!" one of the technicians called, running for the fire extinguisher.

"_IT'S ALREADY KILLING HER! TURN IT OFF!_"

Steve and Thor gripped his arms, holding him back from breaking through the glass barrier and getting to Natasha himself. Savagely yanking the extinguisher from the tech's arms, Bruce doused the chamber in the chemical suppressant again and again until the fire went out. "Natasha, can you hear me?" he called through the glass, squinting against the bright light coming from within. "Natasha, focus on me! It's going to be alright, just hold on!"

"_100 percent! Shut it down!_" a tech at the controls shouted, and another slammed down the lever to turn off the machine. The lights went down and the chamber smoldered as they pulled Natasha's limp body from the wreckage. Abandoning the attempt to hold Clint back, Steve and Thor joined him in his frenzied chase down to the operating theater. They were blocked from crowding the medical team attending to Natasha by Bruce, Tony, and Peter, all of them looking just as terrified as Clint felt and he hated them for it. What gave them the right to be so afraid when it was Clint's wife dying in there?

Before any of them could get a good look, Natasha was rushed out on a stretcher pushed by Sharon's team, the woman herself already shouting instructions on how to treat her before they vanished out the door. Cleanup continued in the quiet lab, making sure the fire was out and the machinery was shut down. Clint and the others hurried after the stretcher.

Clint didn't even get the chance to ask before Sharon was pressing against his shoulder, stopping him from entering the infirmary. "No, we don't know what went wrong and no, we don't know if she's going to be okay. Please wait out here until she's stable and I will come get you," she firmly said. "Sit down, Clint."

For hours they sat, waiting for news. Thor tried to cheer them up with some Asgardian drinking songs, but it was difficult to cheer up when the singing god had tears steadily dripping into his beard. They looked to Steve, their constant leader, for guidance, but he was staring at his hands like foreign creatures.

"We just need to be patient, and I'm sure everything will work out for the best," he noncommittally said. _Working out for the best_ could either be Natasha waking up cured or slipping away from a tortuously painful quality of life. Clint knew that. They all knew that. But in the quiet hallway outside of Natasha's room they stared at the floor and pretended the captain meant she would be alright.

The door opened with a silent hiss of air and Sharon stepped out. Her hair was askew and expression grim as she surveyed them all. "Well, she's alive and the reversal was successful," she announced to great relief. "However...she's comatose. I'm still trying to figure out what went wrong, but." She shrugged helplessly and shook her head. "Probably it was just the shock to her system, which means her body will need some time to repair itself, come to grips with the change."

Hands tangled between his knees, Clint watched Sharon through somber eyes. "When's she gonna wake up?" he asked.

Already Bruce was shaking his head, mouth twisting and looking at the floor. Sharon shot him a look. "She'll wake up when she wakes up, Clint. There's no set timer on these sorts of things, and her body needs this time to heal. As long as she come out of it within the week there shouldn't be too much cause for alarm. And we're monitoring her vitals very carefully for any sign of change, so if something happens we'll know immediately. Now is not the time to be worried. You can go in and sit with her, Clint." She bit her lip, looking down at her clipboard instead of at any of them.

For the next eight days, Clint didn't leave her side. Sharon had a cot set up for him so he could sleep with one hand always closed over Natasha's, always able to feel her in case she woke up, and Bucky standing guard outside. After a while - when it became clear that Clint wouldn't leave and Natasha showed no sign of waking - other visitors were allowed in one at a time.

Steve brought flowers; purple carnations. Tony talked at the speed of light for an hour and didn't once allow himself to actually look at Natasha lying prone on the bed. The picture of poise and calm, Pepper brought Clint a duffel bag of fresh clothes and his favorite foods. Her mouth set itself in a thin red line as she held Natasha's hand for a few minutes, not speaking because Natasha didn't believe in the myth that the comatose could hear everything. Bruce didn't sit with Natasha so much as he sat with Clint, an arm around his shoulders and quietly listening in case he wanted to talk.

But Clint didn't want to talk.

When it was his turn to offer comfort, Thor sang more songs and told Clint about Valhalla, where only the most honored warriors went after death. The hall thatched with golden shields, the valkyries who carried the warriors to their final rest past the golden tree Glasîr, the most beautiful among gods and men. Clint knew it was supposed to reassure him, just like children felt reassured when told their puppies just went away to a farm upstate after getting hit by that car, but he just leaned against the big guy's side and watched the mechanical rise and fall of Natasha's chest.

That was the seventh day.

He was losing her. It was only a matter of time before Natasha got an infection from all the tubes or developed pneumonia. The serum reversal had been successful, but Clint almost wished that it hadn't. If it hadn't she would get over this and he would at least have her for the rest of his miserable life. Now he might never hear her voice again. He couldn't even remember the last thing they'd said to one another. Probably something stupid, like, "Don't forget to buy milk," or, "Brush your teeth before you kiss me; your breath stinks."

"Come on, Tash, you're better than this," he whispered to her early on the eighth morning. "Just open your eyes. I bet if you knew I was talking to you while you were comatose, you'd laugh at me until you turned blue. We're not supposed to believe in this sort of stuff. Neither of us were trained for miracles, but...come on, Tasha. Since when did you do things by the book, anyway?"

He readjusted slightly, head pillowed on both of his arms and one of hers, running a hand soft as a whisper up and down her arm like always. If she died, he would get up and walk again. He would reassemble the broken pieces and go back to work just as he did after Coulson died. But it wouldn't be easy. The loss of her would sit heavy on him for the rest of his life, chasing the smell of carnations down his throat. He understood her thing with roses, now.

"Sharon's bringing her kid to see you later. We're probably gonna end up talking about-about switching you off, Nat. That it would make your pain go away or-or that you wouldn't want to live like this. What should I tell her? I know that if this came up before, when you still had the serum, you woulda wanted me to let you go. But...things are different now. What about those kids we talked about, huh? What about growing old together? I really wanna make fun of you when you start getting wrinkles. Don't...don't take that from me. Just wake up, Natasha. Come on, prove 'em all wrong again. If I didn't think you were made of stronger stuff, I wouldn't have made that call."

After checking that Bucky was standing guard, mechanical arm gleaming in the dimmed corridor, Clint pillowed his head on Natasha's hip and allowed himself to sleep a little longer.

* * *

Being under was like being submerged in the deep end of the swimming pool wrapped in a bubble of air. Natasha could breathe, but was suspended motionless and blind in the depths. Every great once in a while a small sound or sensation would occur to her, but they came and went so quickly they were almost immediately forgotten. The only thing that ever lingered longer than a breath was the tickling up and down her right arm.

It felt like both years and seconds before something changed, before the restrictions around her finally seemed to break and she started clawing her way up. Sensations came more easily, more often, and she reached toward them. Reached for Clint's voice. For the sensation of his hand on her arm. For the love sitting heavy in her heart. There was a light - not a light at the end of a tunnel, much bigger and with more promise - and she swam, bullying her throat to call back when she heard someone singing to her.

_Clint._

She reached. And she _reached_. And she called back.

The smell of carnations rose with her.

* * *

Sharon stepped into the hospital room and froze in the door with a gasp. "Is she _awake?_" she breathlessly asked. Jamie peered out from behind her legs with wide eyes.

Turning to look at her over his shoulder, Clint smiled so fiercely that the tears in his eyes fell free. "Nah, just kinda mumbling."

Waking up from a coma wasn't like on medical dramas, where the patient just opened their eyes and were fine again. The team was called but it took eight hours from the first sign, a soft wordless murmuration, before there was another. Her hands started to slowly open and close and react to soft touches. Thor was concerned that it was going so slowly but Sharon insisted that any sign was a good sign. Pepper made regular coffee and food runs because no one dared leave.

Nearly twenty hours after the first sound, Natasha jerked against the breathing apparatus and her eyes flew open. Sharon carefully removed the tubes and Natasha gasped like a fish out of water before looking at Clint and dropping back against the pillows, out again. "That's fine, it's normal, waking up is a process," Sharon told them.

Clint didn't want to sleep, not when Natasha could be back at any moment, but when night fell and the rest of the team slipped out one by one with promises to return come morning, Bucky took stand outside and Clint couldn't help laying his head down. Just for a little while. Just to rest his eyes. He hadn't slept in over a week and it was beginning to grate on him But as soon as he drifted off he imagined the sound of her shifting or thought he heard her murmuring and jerked awake. The gleam of Bucky's metal arm was a reassuring sight out in the hall. He relaxed but sat up to curl around the edge of the bed-

And found her watching him, green eyes glassy but blessedly open. He scrambled for the nurse call button.

* * *

"You're fine, Natasha. You've been in a coma for nearly nine days, but you're waking up and you're going to be fine," were the first words Natasha heard clearly when she awoke, tears streaming from Sharon's eyes as she checked Natasha's vitals. "Things might be a little confusing at first, and you might have trouble talking, but it's a process and you'll be recovered in no time."

The tubes were gone. Natasha could breathe on her own. The burns and bruises faded and Natasha began the long climb to life after the serum. The path was narrow, rocky and uneven under her shaky legs, but if Natasha was anything she was resilient. When her legs crumbled she just mustered her strength and got up again. When she discovered words had fallen from her memory and left gaping holes, Pepper made a prompt appearance with flash cards and a cup of tea. In the days after Sharon took the samples to test whether Natasha could have children, when the nerves ate at her like the plague, Bruce showed up with journals and charts to explain what her chances and options were.

She was able to go home and continue recovery on her own a week after waking up. There was a team party waiting on the communal floor and she welcomed it. Welcomed the normalcy. Welcomed beloved bodies crowding in close to wish her well. Welcomed the sensation of being temporary just as long as she was alive to watch it all go by. Natasha thought she would feel different, somehow, sense the passage of time or the accelerated aging of her body or just feel things more acutely, but of course she didn't. Just like anyone else, she took all of those things for granted.

Even though there was nothing to really grieve - she knew there would never be another life after Clint even if she could live a thousand years, and she had finally come to terms with the loss of her babies six months before the procedure - but her heart still sometimes ached for her first daughter, her _theoretical_ daughter, only that ache came solely in the nighttime now. Only with Clint there, snoring curled against her back while she shoved the corner of her pillow into her mouth and relished the freedom of being able to feel without consequence.

On her fourth day at home Sharon brought Jamie and the test results. The six-year-old immediately squeezed Natasha round the waist and allowed Clint to ruffle his hair before running off to find Steve. "So, do you want me to tell you both at the same time or just let Nat relay?" she asked, face carefully neutral.

Natasha and Clint didn't budge from the sofa. Sharon nodded and pulled out the file of test data. "So, we've basically done every fertility test known to man-"

"Oh, I'm aware," Natasha replied with a roll of her eyes. "I recall the hysteroscopy to be particularly traumatizing."

Smiling apologetically, Sharon quipped, "Oh, and don't forget the endometrial biopsy," and Natasha shuddered under her skin. Their companionable laughter shuttered and died into silence as they contemplated the papers sitting on the coffee table. "Okay. Let's just...rip the band-aid. Natasha, I am so, so sorry..."

A coil of dread surged coldly in the pit of her stomach and she grasped Clint's hand. It wasn't supposed to happen this way; this was supposed to fix her, make her whole again, heal what was lost so long ago, send the ghosts back to Hell, not break her even further. Natasha closed her eyes and recited from memory every alternative option Bruce had explained to her. Adoption. Surrogacy. Fostering. Sometimes there were fertility treatments that could-

"But your days of sleep are numbered, because once you have your first baby, you aren't gonna get a wink for at least-" Natasha's shock was so strong that she lashed out and slapped Sharon across the face. "Hey! That's _good news_, Tasha!"

"Are you kidding me?!" Natasha yelled. "This isn't a game, Sharon, this is my-" Then it hit her. The blood drained from her face and Sharon grinned. Clint's fingers tightened around hers. "I can have a baby?"

"Nat, you could have _ten_ babies if you wanted to!" cried Sharon tearfully. "God, it's not my fault you didn't wait for me to finish and assumed the worst!"

She was tempted to hit Sharon again, but the blonde woman's arms unexpectedly wrapped around her in a suffocating embrace. Natasha held her in kind and they were silent, pinned in place and so perfectly still, crystallized by the revelation of that moment. She would never be alone. Not that she had ever doubted it once since the team was formed, but to be surrounded by people and to have people of her own were two different kinds of family.

Arrangements were made at SHIELD for Natasha to switch roles from spy to handler-Clint's handler, to be exact. He was partnered with Torres, the Agent who performed their wedding, and she looked after them like rambunctious children. Like Coulson would have. She knew that if it were what she really wanted, she could have left SHIELD altogether, but no matter how much she wished her life had played out differently it was plain that the civilian role was never meant for her. As long as she had Clint and Sharon and the team then she would be content with her lot in life.

Her lot in life, though, was no longer set in stone. It was oh so changeable. That much was proven only six months later, when Clint came up to the apartment from the training rooms and reported with an amused grin, "Tony's been taking bets on us again."

"Oh?" she asked, flipping through a book but hardly seeing the words. Her excuses to skip training were thin but true; she was tired, exhausted, really, and distracted to the point that the lines of the book ran together in her eyes.

Clint pressed a kiss to the top of her head as he passed the couch. "Yep. On whether any kid of ours is going to turn out a Katniss, a Merida, or a Legolas," he replied from the kitchen.

The book snapped shut in her hands and she turned to face him, a cryptic smile playing across the corners of her mouth. "I'll take that action."

"Yeah?"

"Sure," she shrugged. "We'll know in about...oh, seven months, anyway."

A bowl crashed to the floor and shattered but Clint didn't pay any heed to the mess, staring at her with cautious hope fluttering soft behind his shuttered eyes. "Tash, are you pregnant?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Slowly, deliberately, making sure he could see the most minute flicker of her expression, she nodded. Her eyes stung but heart was strong as Clint practically dove over the couch to wrap himself around her. She was ready. This was what she'd been made for.

They would not name their firstborn Rose. No child deserved to be weighed down by ghosts created so long before her own birth. And they understood, in one way or another, that Natasha already had a daughter by that name. A daughter that, though she never really lived, would always live in Natasha's mind, a shadow, a beacon, a memory that she wouldn't give up for all the riches in the world. Remembering Rose was what kept Natasha human through the long waiting sleep, and now it was time to wake up and live.


End file.
